Butter is one of those foods that gets pulled between nostalgia and nutrition science (similar to my previous article about salt). For an active, outdoor, minimalist lifestyle, it can absolutely have a place but it is not a health food in the same sense as olive oil, nuts, or avocado. The evidence suggests butter is best treated as a moderation food: useful, enjoyable, and sometimes practical, but not something to build the diet around.

What butter contains

Butter is mostly milk fat, with a small amount of water, traces of protein, and a few fat-soluble vitamins. A tablespoon of butter is about 14 grams and contains roughly 102 calories, 11.5 grams of fat, and about 7 grams of saturated fat. Butter can also provide vitamin A, and in some datasets it contains small amounts of vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, and iodine depending on the dairy and production method.

That nutrient profile explains why butter is calorie-dense, rich, and satisfying, even in a tiny amount. It also explains why butter is easy to overuse: a little goes a long way. For a minimalist kitchen, that can be an advantage if you want one simple fat that adds flavor and energy, but it also means portion size matters.

How butter is made

Butter is produced by churning cream until the fat globules coalesce and separate from the liquid buttermilk. In simple terms, cream changes from a fat-in-water emulsion into a water-in-fat emulsion as the mechanical action breaks the structure apart. That is why butter feels so different from cream, and why it spreads, melts, and cooks the way it does.

From a minimalist perspective, butter is interesting because it is such a stripped-down food: cream, churned, often salted, and little else. It is one of the oldest examples of turning a raw ingredient into a stable, versatile staple. But the simplicity of production does not automatically make it nutritionally ideal.

Is butter healthy?

The honest answer is: it depends on the context.

Butter is not poisonous, and it is not something you need to fear in small amounts. A 2016 systematic review found butter had little to no association with cardiovascular disease and only weak associations with total mortality and diabetes, though the authors cautioned against treating butter as a health-promoting food. More recent large cohort research found higher butter intake was associated with higher total mortality, while plant-based oils were associated with lower mortality.

The main nutritional issue is butter’s high saturated fat content. Saturated fat can raise LDL cholesterol, which increases cardiovascular risk, and major guidance from the American Heart Association and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends limiting saturated fat and replacing it with unsaturated fats when possible.

So butter is not “bad” in every context, but it is generally not the healthiest default fat if heart health is the goal.

What is healthy about butter

Butter does have a few strengths.

It is a real, minimally processed food, which fits well with a whole-foods, outdoors-oriented, simple-living approach. It is energy dense, portable, shelf-stable for short periods, and easy to cook with. It also delivers fat-soluble vitamins and can make vegetables, potatoes, eggs, and simple meals more satisfying.

For people doing a lot of physical work, hiking, or living outdoors, that satiety can matter. A small amount of butter can help you eat enough, which is important when you are active and burning energy. In that sense, butter can be part of a practical minimalist food system: few ingredients, high usefulness, easy storage.

What to watch out for

The main thing to watch is the combination of butter and excess total saturated fat. Because butter is very rich in saturated fat, it can quickly take up a large share of your daily limit. If the rest of your diet already includes cheese, red meat, cream, pastries, or coconut products, butter can push saturated fat intake too high.

It is also easy to overcook with butter. Butter has a lower smoke point than many refined oils because of its milk solids and water content, so it can brown and burn more quickly in high-heat cooking. Clarified butter or ghee handles heat better because the milk solids are removed, which makes it more suitable for frying or searing. For everyday cooking, though, using butter gently is usually the better approach.

How much butter makes sense

There is no universal “perfect” amount, but a reasonable minimum for a healthy diet is zero. You do not need butter at all to meet nutrition requirements. If you enjoy it, a practical everyday range for many active adults is about 1 to 2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon a day, especially if you are also eating other sources of saturated fat. That keeps butter in the background rather than making it a major fat source.

A sensible upper average for a healthy diet is usually around 1 tablespoon a day for regular use, or a little more on occasion if the rest of the diet is low in saturated fat and rich in unsaturated fats. The U.S. guidance on saturated fat suggests keeping saturated fat below 10% of calories, and the AHA recommends even less, around 6% of calories for heart health. Since one tablespoon of butter contains about 7 grams of saturated fat, it can use up a meaningful share of that allowance very quickly.

For an active outdoor lifestyle, the key is not to chase a higher butter target. It is to use butter strategically: on potatoes, vegetables, eggs, or post-hike meals when you want flavor and calories, while keeping most of your fats coming from more unsaturated sources.

Best way to use butter

Butter works best when it is used like a seasoning fat, not a main nutrition strategy. A small pat on cooked vegetables, a bit in a skillet, or a spoonful in a hot meal can add a lot of satisfaction without making the diet heavy in saturated fat. That makes it a nice fit for tiny house cooking, vanlife meals, and simple camping-style food.

If you want the healthiest overall pattern, butter should usually coexist with olive oil, nuts, seeds, fish, and other unsaturated fats that have stronger evidence for heart health. In other words, butter can have a role, but it should not crowd out the fats that better support long-term health.

Having said that: it’s all about balance. If you love butter, have more. But then you need to reduce somewhere else. The key thing is to have your overall macro split in check depending on your goals — but that’s a topic for another post.

Minimalist takeaway

Butter is a classic minimalist food: simple, compact, and useful. It is not the enemy, but it is also not the fat you want to rely on most. The science suggests a moderate approach is best: enjoy butter, use it deliberately, and keep saturated fat in check by balancing it with healthier unsaturated fats.

For The Rich Minimalist, that is the deeper lesson. The goal is not to strip life of pleasure, but to keep the useful things and use them wisely. Butter can absolutely belong in that life; just in the right amount, and in the right place.

If this kind of practical approach to tiny house living, minimalism, and self-sufficiency resonates with you, consider subscribing to The Rich Minimalist. It’s free.

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Hello from the mountains,

June was a month shaped by both practical essentials and meaningful connection.

Between writing about salt, staying cool in tiny spaces, and spending four days enduro off-road motorcycle riding in the Priorat region with four good friends, the common thread was clear:

A rich life is not about excess, but about the quality of what you choose to keep close, whether that is simple tools, useful knowledge, or the right people beside you.

And at the end of this newsletter, I’m also including a reminder about the crowdfunding campaign for the Trebaluger Equine Rescue Centre on Menorca, which remains very close to my heart.

I completed my 10th obstacle course race: the Spartan Beast in Andorra.

If you haven’t subscribed to my publication yet, you can do so here:

Subscribe now

Happy reading,

Manfred

Here are summaries of what landed this month:

Salt and the Minimalist Lifestyle: Why This Simple Mineral Matters More Than You Think

This article takes a fresh look at salt, explaining why it is essential for hydration, energy, and active outdoor living, while also clearing up common myths. It also covers how much salt we may need, when we need more or less, and how to get enough in a simple, natural way.

Read it here: Salt and the Minimalist Lifestyle

How to Stay Cool in a Tiny House or Van in a Heatwave

This post shares practical ways to beat the heat in small spaces, including passive cooling, airflow, and backup options like DIY air conditioning and portable ACs. It is written for tiny house and vanlife living, where space is limited and summer comfort depends on smart, minimalist solutions.

Read it here: How to Stay Cool in a Tiny House

Trebaluger Equine Rescue Centre

A quick reminder that our crowdfunding campaign for the Trebaluger Equine Rescue Centre on Menorca is still open. I volunteer there, and the work inspires me deeply because it reflects values I care about: responsibility, compassion, and doing meaningful things with a simple life.

Here is a cute video about one of our donkey residents: Matilda:

Thank you for reading and for being part of this journey toward a healthier, freer, and more intentional life.

Stay healthy, stay free,

Manfred

When the temperature climbs, tiny houses and vans can turn into heat traps fast. Their small size, often lots of metal surfaces, and roof-mounted solar panels make summer cooling a real challenge, but a few smart strategies can make a huge difference.

In a space this compact, the goal is not to fight physics with brute force. It is to reduce heat gain, move air well, and use energy only where it actually helps.

Why small spaces heat up

Tiny houses and vans warm up quickly because they absorb heat from several directions at once. Metal bodies and roofs conduct heat efficiently, while windows and roof openings can let in a lot of solar gain if they are not shaded or insulated well. Solar panels can also reduce the usefulness of roof shade strategies, because the roof is already occupied by equipment that brings its own thermal load. And, obviously, if we have solar panels on the roof, we cannot place the tiny house under some trees in the shade.

That is why passive cooling matters so much in these setups. The most effective measures are usually simple ones: shading, insulation, reflective surfaces, and cross-ventilation. In other words, the best cooling often starts before you ever turn on a fan.

First-line cooling tactics

A good heat strategy begins with blocking sun and letting heat escape. Park or orient your van so the largest sun-facing surfaces are minimized, use reflective window covers, and ventilate early in the morning before the interior heats up. In a tiny house, adding roof insulation, window shades, and light-colored exterior surfaces can substantially reduce heat gain.

Fans are still useful, especially when they help exhaust hot air or create a cross-breeze. A fan does not lower the air temperature by itself, but it improves comfort by moving air across the skin and helping evaporation do its job. For a minimalist lifestyle, this is a great example of using the least amount of energy for the biggest gain.

DIY air conditioner

In the NO GRID Survival Projects book, the authors describe a DIY air conditioner, which is a clever low-cost option for small spaces. It works by blowing air across ice inside a cooler, then pushing the cooled air out through ducts, which makes it most useful for a person, a sleeping area, or a small enclosed space rather than an entire room. The build is simple enough for off-grid use and can run on either 12-volt DC power or household electricity, which fits well with vanlife. If you don’t have a 12V setup in your tiny house, you can simply replace the fan with a 220V version.

Its biggest advantage is efficiency at the point of use. It does not try to cool an entire space the way a full AC system does. It cools the air where you actually sit or sleep. That is very much a minimalist approach: targeted comfort, low complexity, low cost, and low power demand.

The limitations are just as important. It needs ice, which can be hard to produce or store in a grid-down situation. Creating ice is also very energy intense. The cooler loses insulation once you cut openings into it. It also does not scale well, so it is best seen as a temporary or localized cooling aid rather than a true replacement for a real AC unit.

Portable ACs

Portable air conditioners are the more familiar option, and they can work well in tiny houses if the venting is done properly. They are convenient because they are self-contained and can cool a small room or sleeping zone without needing a permanent install. The downside is that portable ACs are generally less efficient than split systems, especially single-hose designs, and they need a clear vent path to dump hot air outside.

For vanlife and small off-grid homes, portable ACs shine when you have shore power, a generator, or a strong battery setup. They are best when you need reliable cooling during extreme heat, not as a low-energy everyday solution. In a minimalist framework, they make sense when comfort and safety matter more than elegance or efficiency.

The photo shows my first experiment with this portable AC device. It is a good product with good value for money and an acceptable energy efficiency. A couple of things became very clear during my experiments: ideally the pipe the blasts out the hot air is fitted into a hole rather than the open window. Also the pipe gets very hot and more or less offsets the expelled cool air. So, I didn’t really gain anything except when sitting directly in front of it. The much better approach is to position the portable unit outside, drill a hole in the wall and lead the cold air via the pipe inside.

Lessons learned.

DIY AC vs portable AC

Here is the practical tradeoff. The DIY cooler-and-ice AC is cheaper, simpler, and often lower power, but it is limited by ice supply and short runtime. A portable AC is more expensive and more power-hungry, but it offers real refrigeration-based cooling and can keep working as long as you can power it.

If you live off-grid or move often, the DIY option can be a smart backup for short-term relief. If you stay parked in intense heat for long periods, a portable AC is usually more dependable. The best choice depends on whether your priority is emergency comfort, routine daily use, or battery conservation.

Pro-tip: I also always have a little portable mini USB fan with me. Better than nothing…

Extra heat-beating tips

A few small habits can make the space noticeably cooler. Cook outside when possible, avoid generating heat indoors in the afternoon, and open vents and windows only when outside air is actually cooler than the interior. Night cooling is also powerful: once the sun drops, flush hot air out aggressively and let the building or van cool overnight.

If your setup allows it, use reflective covers on windows and light-colored materials on exposed surfaces. Green shade from trees is ideal, but in many campsites or open van stops it is not available, so portable shade cloth and strategic parking become your next best tools. In a tiny home or van, small improvements stack up quickly.

I also adapt my rhythm a little. I try to shift brain work to the early morning when it’s still cooler or to night hours. During workouts or manual work outside I don’t mind the heat. Another pro-tip: if it’s really unbearably hot, I drive to the village and work from a cafe.

Minimalist summer living

The real lesson here is that staying cool in a tiny house or van is not about owning the biggest machine. It is about using the smartest system. Passive cooling, airflow, insulation, targeted backup cooling, adapting rhythm and habits all fit naturally into a minimalist, outdoor, and nature-connected lifestyle.

That is what makes this topic so relevant to The Rich Minimalist. Simple spaces ask for simple solutions, and summer comfort often comes from understanding the building, the weather, and your own habits rather than from buying more stuff. When you choose the right cooling strategy, you are not just beating the heat. You are living more deliberately.

If this kind of practical approach to tiny house living, minimalism, and self-sufficiency resonates with you, consider subscribing to The Rich Minimalist. It’s free.

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Salt is one of those topics where people tend to swing between extremes. On one side, you have the old advice that treats salt like a villain. On the other side, you have the growing awareness that if you live actively, sweat a lot, and spend time outdoors, you may actually need more salt than you think.

For people living a minimalist, tiny house, or nature-based lifestyle, this matters a lot because your body is not sitting still behind a desk all day. It is moving, sweating, adapting, and losing minerals through activity and weather.

The funny thing is that salt is both incredibly simple and deeply misunderstood. It is a basic mineral, but the conversation around it has become full of confusion, fear, and half-truths.

So let’s strip it down and look at it in a practical way: what salt does, why we need it, when we need more or less, and how to get it in a healthy, natural, minimalist way.

Why salt matters in the body

Salt is not just something that makes food taste better. It is a core part of how your body functions. The sodium in salt helps regulate fluid balance, supports nerve signaling, helps muscles contract properly, and plays a role in maintaining blood pressure and blood volume. Without enough sodium, your body simply does not work well.

This becomes especially important if you live an active life. If you hike, train, cycle, work outside, or live in a hot climate, you sweat. And when you sweat, you lose sodium. If you replace only water and not salt, you can actually make yourself feel worse, not better. That is why people who live outdoors often notice that plain water is not always enough. Sometimes you need electrolytes, and sometimes the simplest electrolyte is just salt.

Check out my earlier article about Ditch the Expensive Sugar Bombs: The Minimalist’s Healthier, Cheaper Electrolyte Drink for Real Rehydration if you want to know more.

From a minimalist perspective, this is beautiful in a way. One small, cheap mineral can do a huge amount of work. You do not need a complicated supplement stack or fancy sports drinks every day. You need to understand what your body is asking for and respond intelligently.

How much salt do we actually need?

This is where things get tricky, because the answer depends on your body, your climate, your sweat rate, your diet, and your activity level. There is no single perfect number for everyone. So, I am very careful in stating this but according to some sources a rough range for a healthy adult can be 1,500 to 2,300 mg of sodium per day, which equals about 3.75 to 5.75 grams of salt per day.

For many sedentary adults, standard dietary guidelines recommend keeping sodium intake moderate, because excessive salt can contribute to high blood pressure in sensitive people. But for people who sweat heavily, eat mostly whole foods, or live and work outdoors, the picture can be very different. You may need more salt than the average office worker, especially in hot weather or during long physical days.

A useful practical approach is to pay attention to your body. If you feel lightheaded, unusually fatigued, weak, crampy, or headachy after sweating a lot, low sodium may be part of the problem. If you crave salty foods after a hard day outside, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Your body may be telling you something useful.

The key is balance. Too little salt can be a problem. Too much salt, especially if your diet is full of processed foods and you are not active, can also be a problem. The minimalist answer is not “more salt always” or “less salt always.” It is “the right amount for the life you actually live.” I personally on balance tend to take rather too much salt than too little in case of doubt. But that is my personal preference based on my specific body condition.

Salt myths that need to go

One of the biggest myths is that salt is always unhealthy. That idea came from a simplified public health message that was useful in some contexts, but it got turned into a blanket rule. In reality, sodium is essential. The issue is not salt itself. The issue is often excessive intake in the wrong context, especially from ultra-processed food combined with inactivity and other health risks.

Another myth is that all salt is the same. Technically, sodium chloride is sodium chloride, but the source, processing, and accompanying minerals can vary. Table salt is usually highly refined and often iodized. Sea salt, rock salt, and mineral salts may contain trace minerals, but those minerals are usually present in small amounts. Still, from a lifestyle point of view, some people prefer less processed salts, both for taste and because they fit a natural food approach.

A third myth is that if you drink lots of water, you do not need much salt. That is not true, especially for active people. If you drink a lot of plain water while sweating heavily, you can dilute your sodium level and feel worse. Hydration is not just about water volume. It is about water plus minerals.

A fourth myth is that salt automatically causes high blood pressure in everyone. Some people are more salt-sensitive than others, and health conditions matter. But for many active people with otherwise healthy diets, sodium is not the enemy people make it out to be.

Good sources of salt

The simplest source of salt is, of course, salt itself. But there are different ways to get it, and some are better suited to a minimalist, outdoor life than others.

One option is sea salt. It is widely available, easy to use, and often preferred for cooking because of its taste. Another is rock salt or mineral salt, which can have a nice natural profile and sometimes includes trace minerals.

Iodized table salt is also important in some diets, especially if you do not eat much seafood or other iodine-rich foods. The iodine part matters more than many people realize, because iodine supports thyroid function.

You can also get sodium from broths, soups, fermented foods, cheese, olives, pickles, salted nuts, cured meats, and naturally salty foods. If you live simply and cook at home, these can be very useful sources. A pot of soup with good salt can be deeply nourishing after a cold day outside. Even something as basic as salted eggs, salted potatoes, or a homemade electrolyte drink can make a big difference.

For a tiny house or off-grid lifestyle, the best salt source is usually the one that is simple, affordable, and easy to store. You do not need ten different specialty salts. One good (little processed) salt that you actually use consistently is usually enough.

When you need more salt

There are several situations where your salt needs can go up.

If you are sweating a lot, you need more salt. That includes hot weather, hard physical work, endurance training, hiking, biking, or long days in the sun. If you are living in a tiny house and spending much of your day outdoors, this becomes very relevant.

If you eat mostly whole foods and little processed food, you may also need to add salt more deliberately. Processed food often contains a lot of hidden sodium (next time read the label of a frozen pizza and you’ll be shocked), while a clean minimalist diet may contain much less. That can be healthy, but it may also mean you need to salt your meals properly.

If you are doing low-carb or ketogenic eating, your sodium needs can go up too, because the body tends to excrete more sodium when insulin levels are lower. This is one reason people on low-carb diets often feel better with more salt, not less.

And if you are sick, have diarrhea, or are recovering from heat exposure, you may need extra salt and fluids. In those moments, plain water is usually not enough.

When you may need less salt

There are also situations where less salt makes sense. If you are sedentary, eat a lot of packaged food, and already get plenty of sodium from your diet, then adding more salt may not help you at all. If you have certain medical conditions, especially related to blood pressure, kidney function, or fluid retention, you should be more cautious and follow professional medical advice.

It is also possible to become too focused on salt as a trendy “biohacking” fix. That can lead people to overdo it, especially if they are copying advice from very active individuals while living a very different life. The right amount of salt is personal. Context matters.

The minimalist lesson here is very simple: do not add complexity where it is not needed. Salt should support your life, not become another ideology.

How to get enough salt in a natural, minimalist way

The best way to get enough salt is usually to salt your food intentionally and pay attention to your body. If you cook at home, use salt as part of your normal process instead of sprinkling it randomly at the table. That way you are building balance into your meals.

If you live an active outdoor life, you may also want to drink mineral water or make a simple homemade electrolyte drink when needed. On especially hot or active days, a bit of salt in water can be useful. You do not need a lab-grade formula. You just need something practical that helps you recover.

Fermented foods and broths are also wonderful because they combine salt with nourishment. In a tiny house kitchen, this is a very efficient way to eat well without fuss.

And perhaps most importantly, learn your own signals. Cramping, unusual fatigue, dizziness, headaches after sweating, or a sudden salt craving can all be clues. Your body often knows before your mind does.

The Rich Minimalist view on salt

From a Rich Minimalist perspective, salt is a good example of how simple things can matter a lot. You do not need a complicated life to live well. You need a few basics that work: water, food, movement, rest, and the right minerals.

Salt fits that philosophy perfectly. It is small, cheap, portable, and powerful. It supports outdoor life, helps with recovery, and keeps your body functioning when you are active and sweating. It is also a reminder that “natural” does not mean “no salt,” and “healthy” does not mean “as little as possible.”

For anyone living in a tiny house, on the road, or close to nature, salt is not something to fear. It is something to understand. And it’s one of the things I always have available (next to coffee).

If this kind of practical approach to tiny house living, minimalism, and self-sufficiency resonates with you, consider subscribing to The Rich Minimalist. It’s free.

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Hello from the mountains,

May was a month of keeping things focused and intentional. I published just a couple of articles and podcasts, but each one connected to the same bigger idea: how to design a life that feels freer, simpler, and more aligned with what really matters.

And at the end of this newsletter, I’m also sharing something very close to my heart: a crowdfunding campaign for the Trebaluger Equine Rescue Centre on Menorca, where I volunteer and draw a lot of inspiration from the work being done there. At the bottom of this post, I will also share a lovely video about a donkey called Matilda, which may tear you up from a strange sad/happy feeling.

If you haven’t subscribed to my publication yet, you can do so here:

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Happy reading,

Manfred

Here are summaries of what landed this month:

Tiny House vs. Camper Van: Choosing Between Roots and Wheels

In this article I compare tiny house living and vanlife from both a philosophical and practical point of view, showing how each lifestyle creates a different kind of freedom. Since my own minimalism journey began with a camper van four years ago and later expanded into a tiny house, this piece also reflects the path that shaped The Rich Minimalist from the beginning.

Read it here.

Eating Healthy and Ethically as a Minimalist in Nature: The Protein Question

A practical look at nutrition for active, outdoor living, this article I explore how to think about protein, meat, plant-based eating, and ethics in a way that goes beyond ideology. It asks what is healthiest, what is most sustainable, and what is most honest when you care about animals, the planet, and your own physical reality.

Read it here.

May Podcasts

Vanlife or Tiny House? Choosing Freedom Your Way

In this episode I compare mobility and adventure against roots and stability, showing that both lifestyles can create freedom, but in very different ways depending on whether I want to roam or stay grounded.

Listen here.

Protein for the Active Minimalist

In this episode, I look at how to fuel an active, outdoor life with enough protein while balancing health, simplicity, sustainability, and the trade-offs between meat, plant-based foods, and processed options.

Listen here.

One last thing…

Supporting Trebaluger Equine Rescue Centre

This month, I also want to highlight something that matters deeply to me: the crowdfunding campaign for the Trebaluger Equine Rescue Centre on Menorca. I volunteer there, and the work is not only meaningful but also very inspiring. It is a place where responsibility, compassion, action, and challenging tasks come together in a way that fits closely with the Rich Minimalist ideas. A rich life is not just about having more time and less stuff, but also about meaning and choosing what deserves your time, care, and commitment.

In our centre, we mainly work with equines. We have 24 horses and 11 donkeys and we also take care of cats, dogs, chicken, ducks, pigs, goats… whoever needs a caring home. All of our “residents” were mistreated or strongly neglected. When they come to us, they get a new life full of happiness, food, shelter, freedom and friends.

Our goal with this campaign is to raise EUR 300,000.

Which I know is a lot. Very very a lot. But even if we get close to that amount, we get a shot at buying the land, which we currently rent. This would bring down our fix cost and reduce the dependency on any landlord. If a landlord decides to sell the land now, our centre, all our good work and most importantly the animals are doomed.

If you want to support the campaign, find it here:

Support our work rescuing animals

Every tiny amount helps because every donation will move us up the rankings and increases visibility.

If you are curious about my perspective on the centre and why this work matters, I also wrote a longer piece about Less Victimhood, More Responsible Citizenship: Rescuing Horses on Menorca.

Thank you for reading, for supporting the publication, and for being part of this journey toward a freer and more intentional life.

Stay healthy, stay free,

Manfred

This creates a practical dilemma for minimalists: how to meet higher protein demands without complicating life or compromising values around sustainability and simplicity.

I explore the trade-off between nutrient density and environmental footprint, and highligh that while animal products offer complete, efficient nutrition, they come with ecological costs. Plant-based diets, on the other hand, require more planning and are not always as “clean” as assumed due to global supply chains. Rejecting rigid dietary ideologies, in this episode I advocate for an adaptable, locally sourced, whole-food approach — prioritizing high-quality protein, seasonality, and practical choices over perfection.

Ultimately, we should align our nutrition with both our physical needs and environmental values.

If you found this helpful, subscribe for more ideas about minimalism, healthy living, (financial) freedom, intentional living, and practical deep-dives on tiny housing.

Subscribers will also get my Solar Serenity ebook for free.

Subscribe now

Or just leave a ❤️

If you found this helpful, subscribe for more ideas about minimalism, vanlife, (financial) freedom, intentional living, and practical deep-dives on tiny housing.

Subscribe now

Subscribers will also get my Solar Serenity ebook for free.

Or just leave a ❤️

If you spend a lot of time outside, moving, training, hiking, working on land, or just living a physically active life in nature, nutrition stops being an abstract wellness topic and becomes a basic part of survival and recovery. You burn more calories, you stress your body more, and if you want to stay strong, healthy, and clear-headed, you need to put something back in. For most active people, the most important macronutrient in that equation is protein.

That is where things get interesting, because once you start asking where protein should come from, the conversation quickly becomes philosophical. Meat, fish, eggs, dairy, legumes, soy, grains, nuts, seeds… Each option comes with health implications, ethical questions, and environmental costs. If you care about minimalism in the broad sense, meaning not just fewer possessions but a simpler, more honest, more responsible way to live, then protein is not just a food choice.

It is a values choice.

This post is my attempt to look at the topic as objectively as possible. Not through ideology, but through function, ethics, and reality.

Why protein matters more when you live actively

If you are outside a lot, your body is doing more work than it would in a sedentary urban life. You may be walking hills, carrying water, chopping wood, training, climbing, biking, or simply spending many hours exposed to weather and terrain. That kind of life burns energy, and it also breaks tissue down and builds it back up again.

Protein matters because it provides the amino acids needed for muscle repair, hormone production, immune function, and recovery. General health guidance often recommends around 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight for sedentary adults. But physically active people often need more, especially if they are doing endurance work, strength training, or living with a high daily physical load. In a practical minimalist life, that means you cannot treat protein as an afterthought. It has to show up every day, in enough quantity, and in a form your body can actually use well.

That is one reason meat has remained such a central food in many traditional outdoor and foraging cultures. It is dense, complete, and easy to digest relative to the calories and nutrients it provides. But that does not automatically make it the best answer in every context, especially once you widen the lens to include ethics and environmental impact.

Meat and red meat: the strongest case for nutrient density

If you are asking purely from a performance and nutrient-density standpoint, meat (especially red meat like beef) is hard to beat. It is a complete protein, meaning it contains all the essential amino acids in a form that is highly bioavailable to the human body. It also provides iron, zinc, B12, creatine, and other nutrients that can be harder to obtain from plant foods alone, especially in a high-output lifestyle.

There is also a strong evolutionary argument that humans are not strict herbivores by design. Research on hunter-gatherer diets suggests that many foraging societies derived a large share of their energy from animal foods, particularly in colder environments or where hunting was more reliable than plant gathering. That does not prove that a meat-heavy diet is automatically optimal today, but it does show that animal foods have played a major role in human adaptation.

From a practical perspective, beef is especially useful if you want to keep your food system simple. A few eggs, some meat, and a few plant foods can cover a lot of nutritional ground with very little complexity. For a minimalist living in nature, that simplicity is attractive, and it’s pretty much my current eating habbit.

The downside is that beef also carries a heavy environmental footprint. According to major assessments by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), livestock are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, and cattle account for the largest share of those emissions within the livestock sector, although estimates vary depending on methodology and system boundaries. So while beef is nutritionally powerful, it is not the most planet-friendly source of protein.

Plant protein: better for the planet, not always simpler

The strongest argument for vegetarian or vegan protein is environmental and ethical. If the goal is to reduce direct animal killing and lower the climate impact of your diet, plant proteins usually win. Soy, legumes, beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh, nuts, seeds, and grains can provide substantial protein while generally using far less land and producing fewer emissions than beef or other ruminant meats.

That sounds like a clear victory for plants, but the reality is a little more nuanced.

Health-wise, a well-designed plant-based diet can absolutely support an active life. Whole soy foods like tofu, tempeh, edamame, soy milk, and soy nuts are especially strong because soy is a complete protein and one of the more efficient plant options. A mix of beans, lentils, grains, seeds, and nuts can also give you all the amino acids you need if you eat enough variety.

But “can” is the key word. In practice, plant-based eating requires more planning. You need to think about protein combinations, calorie density, B12, iron, zinc, calcium, and sometimes omega-3s and vitamin D as well. It is absolutely doable, but for some people, especially those living very physically demanding lives, it can be more work than simply eating some animal foods.

There is also a point worth making about soy specifically. People often use soy as the poster child for plant-based eating, and nutritionally it is excellent. But environmental ethics are more complicated than “plant good, animal bad.” Soy production has its own footprint, and not all soy is equal. Much of the global soy crop is actually used as animal feed, not direct human food. So again, the ethical answer is rarely as simple as people want it to be.

What is the most ethical option?

If you define ethics only by animal welfare, then veganism looks like the clearest answer because it avoids direct animal killing. That is a serious moral argument and it deserves respect. If your primary concern is reducing suffering to animals, plant-based eating is the most straightforward choice.

But if you widen the ethical frame to include the entire planet, the answer becomes more complicated. Agriculture always has costs. Plant foods need land, water, transport, storage, and machinery. Imported soy, ultra-processed meat substitutes, and heavily industrialized monocrops are not magically impact-free just because they are plant-based. There is a global supply chain behind almost everything we eat, which means transport, which mean usage of fossil fuels (another can of worms…).

On the other hand, animal agriculture — especially beef — comes with higher emissions and land use on average. So if the question is “Which diet is easiest to scale ethically at a population level?”, a mostly plant-based diet generally has the strongest case.

But if the question is “What is the most ethically honest diet for a specific person living close to the land?”, then local context matters a lot.

A person who raises animals responsibly, or hunts sustainably where populations are healthy and regulations exist, may argue that ethical killing is more honest than industrial agriculture. That doesn’t mean hunting is automatically morally superior. It just means that the real ethical comparison is not between fantasy versions of foods.

It is between actual systems.

From the point of view of animals, hunting is direct and visible. From the point of view of the planet, well-managed local meat from regenerative systems is more defensible than industrial feedlot meat, even if it still involves animal death. From the point of view of a minimalist who wants to stay connected to nature, that question can become deeply personal.

So what is the most natural human diet?

This is where many debates become tribal, but the evidence suggests a simple answer: humans are flexible omnivores. We are not strict carnivores, and we are not strict herbivores. Our evolutionary history points to a mixed diet that changed with climate, geography, and season. This is a good thing. We are adaptive.

Hunter-gatherer diets were not one universal pattern. Some groups ate more meat, some more plants, and many shifted depending on what was available. But a recurring theme in the literature is that humans have long relied on a combination of animal and plant foods, with animal foods playing a particularly important role in many environments.

That is probably the most honest answer:

The “natural” human diet is not one ideology. It is adaptability. Humans survive by using what the land offers.

For someone living a highly active minimalist life in nature, that means the best diet is probably the one that is:

• nutritionally complete

• easy enough to sustain

• aligned with your ethics

• realistic for your location and budget

That could mean mostly plants with some eggs and dairy. It could mean a pescatarian pattern. It could mean occasional meat, ideally local, seasonal and responsibly sourced. It could even mean hunting, if that is legal, ethical, and skillfully done in your region.

My practical conclusion

If I strip away the ideology, I end up here: for active people living in nature, protein matters a lot, and the best source depends on your priorities.

If your priority is performance and simplicity, meat and especially red meat are very strong nutritionally.

If your priority is planetary impact, plant proteins generally win.

If your priority is minimizing direct animal harm, a well-planned plant-based diet is the most consistent choice.

If your priority is local realism and ethical honesty, a mixed diet from responsible local sources may be the most balanced path.

I do not think the answer is to blindly worship any one camp. Blind ideology without critical thinking is weak and annoys me. I think the answer is to eat in a way that matches reality: your body, your activity level, your local environment, and your ethical line.

For me, as someone who respects and likes animals a lot, lives actively and a lot outdoors and wants to keep things practical, the ideal tends to be a simple, high-protein, mostly minimally processed whole-food, high quality diet. I try to source my food as much as possible locally and seasonally. That includes meat, which I also try to get as much as possible from local farms or hunters where I know animal life is respected.

That feels like the most minimalist answer of all: not perfect, not ideological, just honest and practical.

If this kind of practical approach to tiny house living, minimalism, and self-sufficiency resonates with you, consider subscribing to The Rich Minimalist. It’s free.

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Four years ago, I packed my life into a camper van and hit the road. Well, kind of. Not all of it. But a substantial amount. And I was and still am on the road a lot. Recently, it’s been more vanlife again.

It was the catalyst for everything that followed. That van taught me that I could survive, work, and thrive with not much: a bed, a cooker, shower, toilet, heating and a steering wheel. A year ago, I added a tiny house to the mix, giving myself another base in the mountains of the Pyrenees.

Now, I change between the two worlds a lot. People often ask me which one I prefer, or which one is the “better” minimalist choice. The truth is, they aren’t competitors. They are different instruments in the same orchestra. Understanding the difference between tiny house living and vanlife is the key to knowing which flavor of freedom you’re actually chasing.

The Philosophy: Freedom of Location vs. Freedom of Depth

At their core, both lifestyles are an act of rebellion against the “more is better” culture. They both say no to the mortgage, the extra rooms, the storage units, and the endless (and needless) accumulation of stuff. But the kind of freedom they offer is fundamentally different.

Vanlife is about mobility.

It is freedom of location.

It is the ability to wake up in a forest, drive to a mountain pass, and fall asleep by the sea. The philosophy of the van is adventure, spontaneity, and constant discovery. You are a nomad. Your world is as large as the next tank of fuel. The challenge here is letting go of the need for “home” as a place, and instead finding home in your movement.

Tiny house living is about depth.

It is freedom of place.

You are choosing to root yourself in a specific environment: to learn the seasons, the local neighbors, the way the light hits the trees in winter (and your solar panels), and the rhythm of your specific plot of land. The philosophy of the tiny house is consistency, growth, and community. You are a steward. The challenge here is the opposite of the van: it’s learning to find your adventure within the limits of one beautiful, fixed location.

Technical Realities: The Engine vs. The Foundation

Technically, these two worlds are worlds apart, and your lifestyle will be defined by the hardware you choose. But even though they are worlds apart there are many concepts and products that are very similar (eg, most solar power products are very similar, just more powerful and larger for the tiny house). There are lots of transferable skills and technologies between the two.

A camper van is a masterclass in compromise. Everything is mobile, which means everything must be vibration-proof, compact, and multi-functional. Your water system is just a tank you fill. Your electricity is a battery bank you charge while driving or from a small solar array. Your heating is often very basic. You are always balancing weight, space, and power. If your van breaks, you lose your house. That risk is the price of the engine.

A tiny house is different. It is a structure, not a vehicle. You can build it to higher standards of insulation, comfort, and space. You can have a more reliable water collection system (like the rainwater harvesting I wrote about last month), a larger solar setup, and more permanent furniture. You don’t have to worry about the van engine dying, but you do have to deal with property, land usage, and the logistical challenge of moving if you ever decide to relocate.

The technical “friction” of a van is the maintenance of the vehicle and the search for parking. The friction of a tiny house is the commitment to the plot.

Why Vanlife is the ultimate minimalist teacher

Since I started with the van four years ago, I can tell you: vanlife is a “minimalism crash course.” You cannot hide in a van. You cannot hoard in a van. If you buy something, something else has to go. It forces you to define your essentials with surgical precision.

Vanlife taught me four critical minimalist lessons:

1. Utility is the only beauty. Does it work? Does it fit? If not, out it goes.

2. Experiences beat objects. When you are moving, you care less about your couch and more about the trail you’re hiking.

3. You need much less than you think. I found that I was perfectly happy living on 10 liters of water a day, working on a tiny table, and just bringing a couple of my favorite clothes. I became a master in van laundry.

4. Resilience is built in the road. When something breaks in the middle of nowhere, you fix it. You don’t call a landlord. You become the mechanic, the electrician, … whatever. Whatever problem there is, you gotta solve it. Obviously Internet access on your phone helps. There is a Youtube video for everything.

Comparing the Two: Which One Suits You?

If you are currently deciding between the two, don’t look at the “living options.” Look at your own personality.

Choose Vanlife if:

• You feel restless and want to explore.

• You don’t mind “finding a spot” every few days.

• You are comfortable with a bit of daily unpredictability.

• You want to maximize your travel and geographic variety.

Choose a Tiny House if:

• You crave a consistent routine and a relationship with a specific place.

• You want a “base” where you can grow food, build a garden, or host friends.

• You value a bit more thermal comfort, space, and (close to) standard living systems.

• You want to integrate your life into a community or a specific natural landscape.

My “Rich Minimalist” Hybrid

I don’t choose. I don’t need to thankfully. I use them both and interchange a lot between the two. Depending on how I feel in that period. I use the van for what it’s good for (travel, adventure, mobility) and the tiny house for what it’s good for (deep work, health, roots, community).

This is the beauty of a freedom-first lifestyle: you don’t have to marry your setup. You can evolve. I started in the van, learned the limits of mobility, and added the tiny house to get the depth I was craving. Maybe you’ll start in a tiny house and realize you need the van to see the world. That’s okay.

As I start publishing more about vanlife, keep this in mind: the van is not a “lesser” house. It is a home with a different purpose. It is a tool for seeing the world that also happens to be where you sleep. When you stop viewing it as a “compromise” compared to a house, you start seeing it as a platform for radical freedom.

Final Thoughts: The Journey Matters Most

Whether you choose wheels or roots, both paths lead to the same destination: the realization that the modern dream of “more” is a mirage. We don’t need the three-bedroom suburban box to be safe. We don’t need the garage full of stuff to be happy.

We need space to breathe, space to work, and the freedom to spend our hours on things that actually matter, and in surroundings that actually make us happy.

If you are curious about the van side of this journey, stay tuned. In the coming months, I’ll be diving deeper into vanlife topics, the specific gear that makes vanlife sustainable, and how to maintain the same Rich Minimalist mindset while you’re parked at the edge of the world.

Subscribe to The Rich Minimalist for more practical, field-tested lessons on living better with less, whether you’re in a mountainside tiny house or behind the wheel of a camper van.

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Hello from the mountains,

April was a month of practical building and refinement. The posts this month centered on the systems that quietly support a freer life: money, water, and focused creative work. In other words, not just the philosophy of minimalism, but the infrastructure behind it.

There was also some planning (3 micro-adventures) and building (2 side projects) going on. More on these soon ;)

My little standard reminder: Subscribers to The Rich Minimalist get my book Solar Serenity: Designing Your Off-Grid Tiny Home (Amazon best-seller) for free.

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If you haven’t received the book yet, or if you have any other feedback, send me a message:

Happy reading,

Manfred

Here are summaries of what landed this month:

From the Rich Minimalist to Financial Freedom Mentor

This post marks the shift from simply writing about minimalism and freedom to building a practical tool that helps people track their money with more clarity and intention. It explains why Financial Freedom Mentor is a natural extension of The Rich Minimalist philosophy, and how it turns financial awareness into a more actionable path toward freedom.

Read it here

Rainwater Harvesting in a Tiny House

This article takes a practical look at off-grid water in a tiny house, including rainfall calculations, storage, pumping, filtering, and seasonal water management in the Pyrenees. It also shows how my simple DIY rainwater system supports a lower-consumption lifestyle without making life feel complicated.

Read it here

Designing Your Tiny House for Creative Work

A guide to turning a tiny space into a productive “deep work cell,” this post explains how to design your environment for focus rather than distraction. It shows how a tiny house can become a surprisingly powerful place for writing, building, and other creative work when the space is set up intentionally.

Read it here

April Podcast Episode

Build a Freedom Portfolio, Not a Second Job

In this episode, I talk about the idea of treating side projects as a freedom portfolio instead of simply chasing extra income. The focus is on building intentional projects that compound over time, create leverage, and move you closer to a life with more autonomy and less pressure.

Listen here

April was really about turning ideas into systems. A freer life does not come from motivation alone. It comes from building the right structures around money, water, work, and creativity.

Thank you for being part of The Rich Minimalist community! My goal is to share practical insights into minimalist living, health, and freedom.

Revisit these favorites, and let me know any feedback. Please share with friends:

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Stay healthy, stay free,

Manfred

When most people picture a home office, they imagine a dedicated room, a massive desk, an ergonomic chair that costs as much as a small car, and a bookshelf that looks like it belongs in an Ivy League library.

But often it is still “only” part of a flat in a city. In the middle of the crazy rat race. I’ve learned something important over the last year living in my Berkana Othala tiny house:

True creative focus isn’t about square footage.

It’s about cognitive hygiene.

In fact, the constraints of a tiny house are the best thing that ever happened to my deep work. When you don’t have the space to sprawl, you are forced to be incredibly intentional about how you set up your environment. You aren’t building an “office”; you are building a “Deep Work Cell.”

Here is how I turned my tiny space into a creative sanctuary, and how you can do the same, even if you’re living in a van, a tiny house, or just a small studio.

1. The Power of “Context-Dependent” Focus

In a normal house, the office is where you work, but also where you pay bills, scroll social media, and watch Netflix. The environment is “polluted” with too many contexts. In a tiny house, you don’t have the luxury of separate rooms, so you have to use ritual to create boundaries.

My work cell is where I work on my projects, produce content, manage my apps, work and write. It is a “work-only” zone. When I sit at my desk, I don’t look at my bed. I don’t look at the fridge. I look at my screen, my notes, and the window that gives me a view of nature—pure nature. I see the forest, hills, snow covered Pyrenees in the distance.

The rule is simple:

If I’m in that seat, I’m working. If I’m not working, I’m not in that seat. By training my brain to associate that specific corner with deep focus, I can drop into a flow state in minutes rather than hours. You don’t need a door to separate work from life. You need a behavioral switch.

On the flip side, sometimes I don’t manage to get into high productivity mode. In that case, I also try not to force it. Well, sometimes I must (deadline…). But when not, then I try to distract my body and brain by doing something else. Usually a short walk outside or ten pullups, twenty pushups, and thirty squats outside get me back on track.

2. Eliminate Visual Noise (The Minimalist Advantage)

One of the biggest enemies of creativity is “visual debt.” It’s the pile of papers you don’t need, the stack of books you haven’t opened, the gadgets on your desk that you might use one day. In a large home, you can hide this stuff. In a tiny house, it’s staring you in the face.

I treat my desk (which is my table, my only table) like a sterile operating theater. Everything I need for the current task is out. Everything else is not on the table. The task could be writing an article, nerding on an app, cooking, eating, or woodwork. Whatever it is, only the stuff I need for that task is on the table.

If I’m laptop work, all I have is my laptop and maybe pen and paper for quick notes. That’s it. No stack of reference books. No second monitor taking up space. No tangled mess of cables. Because I have so little space, I’ve had to digitize almost everything I own. My “reference library” lives in the cloud, and my “stationary” lives in one small drawer. This isn’t just about space-saving. It’s about reducing the cognitive load on my brain.

When you have less to look at, you have more mental capacity to think.

3. Optimizing for “The View” (Nature as a Partner)

People spend thousands on office decor and buy huge posters showing inspirational photos of nature. I’ve found that the best backdrop for creative work is the one you can’t buy: actual views into actual nature.

In my tiny house, my desk is oriented toward the window. Most people are skeptical of a window in front of a desk because it’s a “distraction.” I think that’s dead wrong. When you are doing deep work, you need a way to rest your eyes and reset your mind. A screen is taxing. A view of the Pyrenees, the wind moving through the trees, or a bird landing on a branch is restorative.

I use the view as my “refresh” button. When I’m stuck on a piece of code or struggling to finish a newsletter draft, I don’t check my phone. Well, sometimes yes, I am not holy. But mostly I just look out the window. I watch the landscape. It takes thirty seconds, and I’m back in. It’s an analog reset that keeps me from spiraling into the digital rabbit hole of useless unproductivity.

4. Hardware Minimalism

If you’re working from a tiny space, your tech needs to be as mobile and efficient as your house. I’ve moved away from the “desk setup” mentality. I don’t have a giant printer, a desktop tower, large (second) screen, or a complicated speaker system. Generally, I own less and focus on owning more time than stuff, which is another topic.

I use:

• A kinda powerful, lightweight laptop.

• Noise-canceling headphones. Even in the mountains, there’s wind, rain, or Anthony’s chickens. Headphones are my “portable walls.”

• A bluetooth mouse. It sounds silly and most people just use the trackpad on their laptop. But I think this is incredibly slow and drives me crazy.

When you simplify your hardware, you lower the barrier to starting. I can be “at work” in ten seconds. If I’m traveling, my office packs into a single, small bag. That mobility is a form of freedom that makes the work feel less burdensome.

5. Protecting the “Deep Work” Window

In a tiny house, it is very easy for small interruptions to become big problems, which I guess is true for any house and type of living anyway.

This is why I protect my mornings. I don’t check email until the “Deep Work” window is closed. I don’t look at any support requests or community feeds. I focus on the hardest task first: the writing, the coding, the big-picture thinking—the BHAG.

By the time the house needs maintenance or the world demands my attention, the most important work of the day is already done. It’s a huge relief. I’m not carrying the weight of an unfinished project all day long. I’m finished, satisfied, and free to deal with the realities of off-grid life without feeling like my work is suffering.

But obviously, I am not sticking to this routine every day. Sometimes it’s unavoidable to do it later, split the deep work window in half, or don’t do it at all. I want to progress, but I also want to enjoy.

Designing Your Own Cell

You don’t need a tiny house to build a Deep Work Cell. You just need a “tiny attitude”.

1. Dedicate a “Zone”: Even if it’s just one end of a kitchen table, make it “The Cell.” When you’re there, you’re there.

2. Clear the Decks: Spend five minutes clearing every single item that isn’t essential to the current task.

3. Control the Noise: Use high-quality headphones to create an audio bubble.

4. Anchor to Nature: If possible, face a window. If not, put a plant or a piece of nature-inspired art in your line of sight.

5. Protect Your Start: Don’t let the world into your head until you’ve put your own work out into the world.

Working from a tiny space taught me that I don’t need a sprawling office to be a professional. I just need focus, simplicity, a small place where I can show up and do the work, and less distraction or “productive” distraction, which is looking at nature and its movements.

I’ve produced more in the last six months inside this wooden box than I did in years of working in a corporate cubicle or a “proper” office. It turns out, when you get rid of the extra space and the extra stuff, all you’re left with is the work on your projects. And that’s exactly where the magic happens.

If you’re interested in how to structure your work, money, and life to create more room for these kinds of passion projects, consider subscribing to The Rich Minimalist. I’ll keep sharing the practical, down-to-earth lessons I’m learning from life in the wilderness.

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If you found this helpful, subscribe for more ideas about (financial) freedom, intentional living, minimalism and practical deep-dives on tiny housing, solar systems, water supply, storage, or emotional aspects to thrive in your off-grid tiny home!

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In the city, you turn on the tap and water appears. You flush the toilet and it disappears. You shower, wash dishes, water plants, and hardly ever ask where any of it comes from. In a tiny house, especially an off-grid tiny house in the mountains, that kind of invisibility disappears very quickly. Water becomes something real again. Something limited. Something that needs to be understood, respected, collected, stored, filtered, and used carefully. In fact, my most important ongoing challenge.

That change, however, is actually one of the greatest gifts of living this way.

When you live off-grid, water is no longer just a utility. It becomes part of your daily awareness. You start noticing rain forecasts like a farmer. You become more water-aware again and connected. You think about roof surfaces, tank capacity, pump pressure, filter stages, and shower habits. You become much more deliberate, and that deliberate living tends to spill into the rest of your life too. You waste less. You pay attention more. You stop assuming abundance and start creating it.

This is especially true in my tiny house in north-east Catalonia, in the Pyrenees, where the average rainfall is about 600 mm per year. That is enough to make rainwater harvesting not just possible, but very practical. In fact, once you understand the math, you realize that your roof is a surprisingly productive little water factory.

Water Sources for an Off-Grid Tiny House

Before going into my own system, it helps to understand the different water sources available to someone living off-grid. Most tiny houses do not rely on a single source. They work best when they combine a few options, because nature rarely behaves in a perfectly consistent way.

The first and most obvious source is rainwater. If you have roof surface, rain is free water falling from the sky, and in many off-grid setups it is the most elegant solution. It requires infrastructure, yes, but once the system is built, it is beautifully simple. And it makes you independent at no extra cost. Water lands on the roof, flows into a tank, gets filtered, and can be used for washing, showering, dishes, and sometimes even drinking if the filtration system is adequate and properly maintained.

The second source is transported water. This is the backup when rain is not enough. In my case, during summer months with very little rainfall, I bring water to the land and fill the tanks using the 100-liter fresh water tank of my camper van. It is not as romantic as rainwater, but it is very practical. Off-grid life is not about purity tests. It is about having a system that works.

A third possible source for some tiny houses is a well or spring. If you are lucky enough to have one on your land, this can be an excellent source of water. But wells bring their own issues: pumps, permits, maintenance, seasonal variation, and water quality testing. Digging a well can be super expensive. Springs can be wonderful too, but they are often location-specific and not always reliable year-round.

Some people also use municipal water while still living in a tiny house, especially if the house is not fully off-grid. That can make sense as a transitional setup. It reduces complexity, but it also reduces independence. For me, the appeal of off-grid living is to reduce reliance on systems I don’t control, so rainwater is the main story.

And finally, there is the most important source of all: water discipline. You can have all the infrastructure in the world, but if you consume carelessly, you will still run dry.

In a tiny house, water habits matter almost as much as water supply.

Why Rainwater Harvesting Works So Well Here

I live in a place where the annual rainfall is around 600 mm. That means, in simple terms, that every square meter of roof can theoretically collect about 600 liters of water per year.

My total roof surface is 24.7 m2, made up of 16.9 m2 of tiny house roof and 7.8 m2 of shed roof. Multiply that by the annual rainfall and you get roughly 14,820 liters per year. Dividing that over 365 days gives an average of about 40 liters per day.

That number is both encouraging and humbling.

It is encouraging because it shows that a relatively small roof can collect a meaningful amount of water. And it is humbling because average numbers can be misleading. Water does not arrive evenly. Some months bring plenty. In October I can get 63.5 liters per square meter—on average and in theory. In June I might get only 17.8 liters per square meter. That means I need to think seasonally, not just annually.

In addition, even though I may have months where I can collect more water, I also need a good way to store water, like big enough deposits and so that the water doesn’t turn bad (no sun exposure etc). And of course, in those summer months when I get less water, I need more (showers for instance).

This is where off-grid living teaches you to become a strategist. You don’t just ask, “How much water can I get?” You ask, “When do I get it, where do I store it, and how do I stretch it through the dry periods?”

My Real-World Water Use

One of the biggest changes in my life has been learning to use much less water. I now live on around 10 to 20 liters per day, and that includes daily showers. I also combine this, for example, when I go to the next town for a Crossfit workout—then I usually shower there.

That is a big contrast to normal urban life, where a single person can easily use 100 liters or more per day without thinking about it. But once you start paying attention, you discover that most of that usage is not essential. It is habit.

My shower routine is a good example. I always shower cold, which means—apart from the health benefits—I am much faster and typically only need about 8 liters per shower. That makes a huge difference. I am not standing there wasting warm water for ten minutes while daydreaming about my to-do list. I get in, wash, get out, and move on with my day.

My toilet is a dry toilet, so it does not use water at all. That alone saves a surprising amount of consumption. It also simplifies the plumbing system and reduces the need for ongoing water just to deal with waste.

This is why the whole setup works. The source is not enough by itself. The source and the usage need to match. If you want to live on rainwater, your habits need to support that reality.

How My DIY Rainwater System Works

My system is simple, but simple does not mean primitive. In fact, one of the best things about tiny house infrastructure is that small, smart systems can work very well if they are designed with care.

Rainwater falls onto the roofs of the tiny house and shed. It’s collected in gutters and from there it enters the collection system and is routed into various deposits or tanks. I have several tanks, and I can add or remove them from the circuit individually depending on the season, the water level, and what I need at the time.

That flexibility is important. It means I can adapt the system rather than forcing the weather to fit my life. In wetter periods, I can store more. In drier periods, I can use a smaller active setup and simplify the circuit. The system is modular, and that is one of the reasons it works well in practice.

After collection, the rainwater passes through my DIY filter setup. I built the filters myself, and they are designed to remove the kinds of particles and impurities that naturally come with roof runoff. You can see the basic idea in the photo below.

It’s a layered filtration system, physical filtering, and a practical, handmade approach that fits the tiny house mindset. I also have an additional filter on the tap, which gives me a second layer of protection before water is used inside the house. I use the faucet filters from Tappwater with their five-stage nanofiltration.

That double-filter approach is important because no roof collection system is perfect. Leaves, dust, fine particles, insects, and all kinds of mountain debris can find their way into the water path. Filtration is what turns collected rain into usable water.

It is still not drinking water. But it is safe enough to use for cleaning the dishing, shower, or brushing teeth. Drinking water I need to buy in normally eight liter canisters when I do my shopping run anyway.

Pumping Water into the House

Once the water is collected and filtered, it needs to get into the house. For that, I use a simple outdoor pump that is normally sold for garden watering systems. It is not fancy, and that is exactly why I like it. It does the job without overcomplicating the setup.

This is another principle I try to follow in off-grid living: use ordinary tools in smart ways. Whatever does the job. This pump cost me EUR 120.- Proper “house pumps” are more like EUR 1000,- or more. You do not always need specialized, expensive equipment. Sometimes a garden pump is perfectly fine for tiny house use, as long as the flow rate, pressure, and durability are enough for the system. It’s waterproof so it can just sit outside just under the tiny house

.The water gets pumped into the house and can then be used through the tap, the shower, and the rest of the internal setup. Because I already keep my consumption low, the pressure on the system stays manageable. That is the beauty of low-demand living: the whole infrastructure can stay simpler and more robust.

What the Dry Months Change

The most interesting challenge is not when it rains. It is when it doesn’t.

Summer forces me to think ahead. I need to supplement water by bringing it to the land using my camper van tank. That means I can’t be lazy with my usage. If I waste water in June, I pay for it later. If I use water consciously in April and May, I buy myself more margin in July and August.

This is where the idea of planning and resilience becomes very real. Rainwater harvesting is not just about collecting free water. It is about designing a lifestyle that can absorb variation. A good off-grid system does not pretend that every month will be equal. It prepares for imbalance.

And that is a useful lesson beyond water too. Whether it is money, energy, food, or attention, a good minimalist system is one that can handle dry seasons.

Why This Matters Beyond Plumbing

A lot of people think off-grid systems are interesting because they are technical. I think they are interesting because they are philosophical.

When you build your own water system, you are forced to answer important questions. How much water do I really need? What is enough? What can I do without? How do I make the system elegant, easy-to-use, and robust instead of bloated or fancy? How do I stay comfortable without becoming wasteful?

Those are not just plumbing questions. They are life questions.

Rainwater harvesting has made me more careful, more grateful, and much more aware of how much abundance can come from a simple roof and a bit of planning. It has also made me more independent. I know where my water comes from. I know how it moves. I know what happens when the sky gives more or less. That awareness is powerful.

Living this way does not mean living with less meaning. It means living with more contact with nature, with reality.

And honestly, that is one of the best things about the tiny house life.

If this kind of practical approach to tiny house living, minimalism, and self-sufficiency resonates with you, consider subscribing to The Rich Minimalist. It’s free. I’ll keep sharing small, realistic shifts that move you closer to a life that’s lighter, freer, and a lot more yours.

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The idea behind The Rich Minimalist has always been simple: wealth is not just about having more money. It is about having more freedom, more time, more clarity, and more control over your life.

In short:

Our goal is to become time-rich.

That belief is what led me to create Financial Freedom Mentor.

At first, it was just a private tool for myself. I wanted something that would help me identify and track the numbers that actually matter, stay focused on the path to financial freedom, and avoid getting lost in the noise of generic personal finance advice. I did not want another cluttered app full of (way too complicated) features I would never use. I wanted something minimal, practical, and actually motivating.

Over time, I realized that if this tool was useful for me, it might be useful for others too. And it is part of my own freedom portfolio.

So today, I’m excited to say that I have launched Financial Freedom Mentor on Product Hunt.

This post is not a sales pitch.

It is more of a reflection on why I built it, what problem it tries to solve, and why I think it may be valuable for anyone who wants to build wealth and time-richness with intention rather than by accident.

Why I built it

Most people who want financial freedom are not short on motivation. They are short on clarity.

They know they want to be free. (I think we all do, somehow.)

They know they want more time and less stress. They know they do not want to work forever. But they often do not know the exact number they are aiming for, how fast they are moving, or which actions are actually making a difference.

That is where my Financial Freedom Mentor shows the path. It is designed to help you focus on the few things that truly move the needle:

• Stabilizing your net worth—specifically liquid net worth.

• Reducing your debt.

• Controlling your monthly expenses.

• Growing passive income.

• Calculating and improving your freedom number.

• Projecting and chasing your freedom date.

That is it.

No distraction. No clutter. No endless tabs and charts that make you feel productive without actually helping you become financially freer.

Focus on the key metrics that matter

One of the biggest problems with personal finance is that it can become overwhelming very quickly.

There are so many possible numbers to track that people end up tracking too much and learning too little. But if your real goal is financial freedom, then most of the noise can be ignored.

You do not need to obsess over every minor detail.

You need to focus on (automatic) expense coverage.
You need to know whether your net worth is growing.
You need to know whether your debt is shrinking.
You need to know whether your expenses are under control.
You need to know whether your passive income is increasing.

Those are the main levers that matter most.

When you keep your attention on these key metrics, financial freedom becomes less abstract. It becomes measurable. It becomes visible. It becomes something you can actually influence.

And once something becomes measurable, it becomes easier to improve.

See your exact freedom number and date

One of the most powerful parts of the app is the ability to calculate your freedom number and your freedom date. And then get it visualized in the app. Whenever you take action and improve one of the metrics, your timeline visually changes too.

That matters because “someday” is not a plan.

A lot of people want to become financially free, but they do not know what that actually means in numbers. How much money do you need? What level of expenses are you trying to cover? How much passive income do you already have? How long will it take to get there?

When those questions stay vague, the goal feels distant and fuzzy.

But when you can see your exact freedom number, everything changes.

It gives you a real target.

It tells you what you are aiming for, how far along you are, and how your decisions today affect your timeline tomorrow. If you increase your savings rate, reduce your expenses, or grow your passive income, you can see the freedom date move closer. That is a very motivating feeling.

It turns financial independence from a dream into a path.

A minimalist money dashboard

I have always believed that simplicity creates clarity.

That is why the app was designed to feel like a minimalist money dashboard rather than a giant financial command center. I wanted it to feel calm, clean, and focused.

Because money tools should reduce stress, not add to it.

A cluttered app can be counterproductive. It can make users feel behind, confused, or overloaded. But a minimalist dashboard does the opposite. It helps you breathe. It helps you focus. It helps you see the bigger picture without getting lost in unnecessary complexity.

Financial freedom itself is a form of simplicity.

And I wanted the app to reflect that.

Turning theory into habits

A lot of people understand the theory of financial independence. They know about the FIRE movement. They know about saving more, investing wisely, and keeping lifestyle inflation under control. Some fall into the trap of too much frugality, which too much of that for me means I cannot enjoy life, which is not what I want to achieve.

The challenge is not usually understanding the theory.

The challenge is turning it into behavior.

That is why I wanted the app to support daily habits, not just dashboards.

Because in the end, financial freedom is built through small, repeated choices:

• choosing to save instead of spend,

• checking your progress instead of ignoring it,

• making one extra payment,

• increasing your investment rate,

• reducing one recurring expense,

• staying consistent when motivation fades.

The app is meant to support that process.

Not by overwhelming you with reminders, but by gently helping you stay in motion.

Micro lessons for financial education

Another important part of the app is the idea of bite-sized money micro lessons.

Most people do not need a 40-hour financial course to start improving. They need small, timely lessons that help them make better decisions in real life.

A micro lesson can explain one concept clearly and quickly:

• What is a safe withdrawal rate?

• Why does savings rate matter so much?

• How does net worth growth work?

• What is the difference between income and wealth?

• Why does passive income matter on the path to freedom?

The goal is not to turn users into finance experts.

The goal is to give them just enough understanding to make smarter choices, build better habits, and stay motivated for the long run.

Financial education should feel practical, not academic.

Ask the Money Mentor

One of my favorite parts of the app is Ask the Money Mentor.

It is a bespoke AI chatbot designed specifically around financial freedom based on the ideas of The Rich Minimalist. That means users can ask real questions and get guidance tailored to their journey.

For example:

• Should I pay off debt first or invest first?

• How can I increase my savings rate?

• What should I focus on this month?

• How do I think about passive income?

• Am I on track for financial freedom?

The idea is not to replace human judgment or give generic finance answers. It is to give users a helpful, intelligent companion they can turn to when they need clarity.

Sometimes the hardest part of money management is not the math. It is knowing what to do next.

Why this matters to me

The Rich Minimalist has always been about a broader idea of wealth.

Wealth is not only money.
It is freedom.
It is time.
It is health.
It is simplicity.
It is being able to live deliberately rather than reactively.

Financial Freedom Mentor grew naturally out of that philosophy.

It is a tool for people who want to build a life rich in time without unnecessary complications.

Today’s launch

And today, I’m happy to share that the app is officially live on Product Hunt.

If this idea resonates with you, I would love for you to check it out, upvote the launch, and leave a comment with your thoughts. Feedback from thoughtful readers has always helped shape my work, and I would be especially grateful for yours.

I’ll add the Product Hunt link and upvote button below.

Or click this button:

Financial Freedom Mentor on Product Hunt

If you have any questions, please leave a comment on Product Hunt or just here down below. I answer all of them.

Hello from the mega stormy mountains!

March was intentionally lean with just three posts. Why? I poured most of my energy into finishing Financial Freedom Mentor, my new app that makes smart money decisions visible and effortless.

It launches Saturday on Product Hunt. I’d love for you to check it out, try the free trial, and share feedback. The app helps you figure out the really critical metrics on the way to financial freedom and stick to it. It also calculates your Freedom Date. Built from my own minimalist, passive income, financial freedom journey, tiny house experiments: eat your own dog food.

My little standard reminder: Subscribers to The Rich Minimalist get my book Solar Serenity: Designing Your Off-Grid Tiny Home (Amazon best-seller) for free.

Subscribe now

If you haven’t received the book yet, or if you have any other feedback, send me a message:

Happy reading,

Manfred

Here are summaries of what landed this month:

Touching the Void: Joe Simpson’s Impossible Crawl and the Minimalist Power of “One More Step”

Joe Simpson’s 1985 Andes survival—shattered leg, cut loose into a crevasse, 3+ days crawling to base camp—proves that when everything strips away, “one more step” beats despair every time.

Read it here.

From Stuff-Rich to Time-Rich: Minimalism as Your Fastest Financial Freedom Strategy

Lower fixed costs (tiny house vs mortgage, bike vs car, simple meals) shrink your FIRE number by hundreds of thousands—real math plus app screenshots showing the freedom acceleration.

Read it here.

The Freedom Portfolio: Turning Passion Projects into Future Passive Income

Treat tiny house rentals, ebooks, apps, and passion projects like a curated portfolio that compounds into future income—selection criteria, time protection, and tracking shared from my own Viking Tiny House + Financial Freedom Mentor journey.

Read it here.

A note on the app launch

Financial Freedom Mentor started as my personal tool for tracking my progress to become financially free. I am not there yet, but I am on a good path and the app helped me making the key metrics visible and traceable.

The key benefits:

• Focus on the key metrics that really make a difference.

• See your exact freedom number and date - no more guessing.

• Minimalist money dashboard (no clutter).

• Turn Financial Independence theory into daily habits.

• Educate yourself via bite-sized money micro lessons.

• Ask the Money Mentor, a bespoke AI chatbot optimized for financial freedom.Know which metrics are effective to achieve financial freedom

Now it’s ready to help others cut noise, prioritize freedom, and see their path clearly. The video above shows the key principles of the app. For more details please check the post on Product Hunt. If you like it, give it some love—it helps me a lot.

If you have any feedback or questions, put it in the comments or message me.

Financial Freedom Mentor on Product Hunt

Stay healthy, stay free,

Manfred

Most people think about income in one of two ways: either they trade time for money in a job, or they invest money and hope it grows quietly in the background.

But there’s a third way that fits the Rich Minimalist mindset much better: build a freedom portfolio.

What’s a freedom portfolio?

It means choosing a small number of side projects that are aligned with your skills, your values, and your life, then giving them enough focus and structure that they can eventually produce meaningful income: some active, some passive, and ideally a bit of both but more towards passive. We wanna be free eventually.

I like this idea because it feels very human. It doesn’t require becoming a full-time entrepreneur overnight, and it doesn’t force you into the usual “hustle culture” trap where everything becomes about scale, speed, and endless noise and endless work hours. Instead, it asks a better question:

What are the few projects that could genuinely improve my life, give me joy, are aligned with my values, and create more freedom over time?

That is a much more sustainable way to think about money, and a portfolio of projects that create money.

The freedom portfolio concept also fits beautifully with the kind of life I live and want more of. The tiny house, camper van rentals, the Spartan Race Preparation Program, my writing, and the new Financial Freedom Mentor app all sit in the same general ecosystem. They are different, but they share the same DNA: they are low-overhead, intentional, practical, and closely tied to the life I actually want. That’s the point. A freedom portfolio is not random side-hustle chaos. It is a curated collection of projects that point in the same direction, that you identify with and that you are passionate about.

Why a freedom portfolio matters

If you depend on one single source of income, your freedom is fragile. Lose the job, lose the contract, get burned out, get sick, or simply stop enjoying the work, and suddenly everything becomes unstable.

A freedom portfolio spreads that risk out. Exactly like an investment portfolio.

It gives you more than one engine. One project can be slow to mature while another is already producing cash. One can be more active and hands-on, while another becomes more passive over time. Most projects fail by the way—as I know from my own (many) painful experiences. So it’s good to have several and abandon the ones that don’t work without killing the portfolio.

More importantly, it changes the emotional texture of earning money. Instead of feeling trapped in one role, you start to feel like you are building a set of assets—some financial, some creative, some experiential—that all reinforce your independence. That is a huge shift. You’re no longer only exchanging hours for salary. You’re building things that can continue to serve you later.

I also learned that after some projects, the portfolio develops its own inertia. Even though the projects may be very different, there are always similarities and transferable skills. For instance, finding customers who are willing to pay, creating a landing page, or setting up email campaigns.

This is also where minimalism becomes a real advantage. When your life is simple, your fixed costs are lower, your mental load is lighter, and your schedule has more breathing room. That means you actually have the energy to work on side projects without feeling like your life is already overflowing.

In other words:

Simplicity creates capacity. Capacity creates optionality. Optionality is freedom.

How to choose the right projects

Not every idea deserves a place in your freedom portfolio. If you try to build ten things at once, you’ll probably build nothing well. The key is selection. You want projects that are aligned, realistic, and worth the effort. I usually think about them through a few filters.

Filter 1: Skill

First, does the project use skills you already have or are willing to build? That matters because leverage comes from competence. If you know how to write, teach, film, design, organize, sell, build, host, or explain things clearly, those are powerful foundations. All my projects and offers came from this principle. I am not trying to become someone else. I am trying to extend what already made sense in my life.

Filter 2: Passion (or at least liking)

Second, do you actually enjoy the project? Because if you hate the process, you probably won’t stick with it long enough for it to compound. A good side project should have at least some intrinsic joy. It doesn’t have to be easy, but it should feel meaningful. I enjoy creating things that are useful, simple, and aligned with freedom. That is why the tiny house, camper vans, and the writing all make sense together.

Filter 3: Leverage

Third, does the project have leverage? In other words, can one effort serve many people, or keep paying you after the initial work is done? An ebook, an app, a rental property, a digital guide, or a well-structured coaching program can all do that. They all scale and are good candidates for passive income. A project with low leverage may still be valuable, but if your goal is future passive income, leverage matters a lot.

Filter 4: Overhead

Fourth, what is the overhead? If a project requires huge monthly costs, lots of management, or constant problem-solving, it may become a burden instead of a freedom asset. That’s why I love low-overhead ideas like digital products, like ebooks or downloads of guides, simple systems, and focused online tools. They can be managed leanly, and that preserves your margin.

Filter 5: Passive Income

Fifth, how much of the income is active versus passive? Some projects will always have an active component, and that’s fine. The goal is not perfect passivity. In fact, it’s not possible. All projects will need some steering at some points. The goal is to move the balance over time. For example, an app may require updates, support, and marketing, but it can still generate income long after the initial work has been done. That is a very different thing from a pure hourly model. It’s one of the reasons why I stopped one-on-one personal coaching. It’s lovely but it does not scale.

Filter 6: Alignment

And finally, does the project align with your principles? This part is crucial. I don’t want to build random stuff just because it could make money. I want projects that reflect the same values I write about: simplicity, independence, health and fitness, time richness, minimalism, nature, and honest value creation. If a project conflicts with those principles, it will eventually feel wrong, even if it earns money.

My own freedom portfolio

In my case, the most natural examples are all connected.

The Viking Tiny House is a great example of a freedom asset that also reflects my philosophy. It is not just a house; it is an experience, a place of retreat, and eventually a rental concept for people who want to disconnect and reconnect with nature. It fits the Rich Minimalist mindset because it offers high value with relatively low complexity. It is small, intentional, and meaningful.

The camper van rental idea sits in a similar category. Fred, my camper van is not just a vehicle. It is a mobile freedom platform. For the right person, it can be a source of adventure and a source of income at the same time. The key is usefulness and flexibility.

The Spartan Race Preparation Program is another good example. It comes from a real interest and a real personal experience. It’s not fake guru content. I completed nice Spartan races and initially found it challenging to prepare effectively. So, I developed this program to share my experience of what works related to training intensity, the right exercises, nutrition, recovery and crucial race day do’s and dont’s. When a project comes from real life, it tends to be more authentic, easier to explain, and more useful to others.

Then there are ebooks, writing, and educational content. These are classic freedom portfolio assets because they can be created once and sold many times. They also fit very well with a minimalist lifestyle because they require very little overhead. No warehouse. No inventory. No staff. Just ideas, structure, and distribution. Most my content is free. My ebooks are very cheap because they are mostly intended to increase visibility.

And then there is my new Financial Freedom Mentor app. This is probably the cleanest “eat your own dog food” example of the entire concept. It started as a passion project and a tool for myself. I built it because I wanted something practical to support the way I think about money and freedom.

At some point I thought: “Hm, if this is useful for me, it may be useful for others, too.“ So, I polished the app, published it, and now I’m trying to generate passive income from it by helping other people use it too.

That is exactly how a freedom portfolio should work: It began as something useful to me and support me in building my freedom portfolio, and now it has the potential to become useful to others while creating income in the background.

That’s the win-win. I get a tool I believe in. Other people get a tool that helps them. And if the project works, it can continue to produce value over time without needing to consume my whole life. If other people find value in it, they will be willing to pay. Then it’s a nice win-win situation and a successful project.

Protecting focused time

The biggest threat to a freedom portfolio is not lack of ideas. It’s lack of time. Side projects die when life gets too noisy. That is why simplification is not just a nice lifestyle choice. It is a strategic necessity.

If you want projects to compound, you need protected blocks of focus. That means fewer unnecessary obligations, fewer low-value commitments, and fewer distractions. It means keeping your life lean enough that you can still think clearly after work. It means being honest about what drains you and what feeds you.

For me, that often looks like a simple routine: work sessions that are focused, daily or weekly creative blocks, and a lifestyle that doesn’t create too much clutter, debt, or administrative weight. The lower your overhead, the easier it becomes to invest energy into the projects that matter. Tiny house living helps here because it naturally forces simplicity. Fewer possessions, fewer repairs, fewer maintenance headaches, fewer things competing for attention. And no time wasters. Lots of people waste time without adding value. Endless video conferences that could be covered by one focused email.

It’s where we go full-circle with the main idea of the Rich Minimalist: to become time-rich. It’s a self-reinforcing loop. Ideally. We create freedom portfolio projects to become more time-rich. When we are more time-rich, we can create more projects.

Track the real numbers

One of the most helpful things you can do is make the freedom path visible. A lot of people have side projects, but they don’t really know if they’re worth it. They have a vague feeling, but not a system.

If you track both time invested and money invested, then later compare that to income produced, you start to understand what is actually working. You can see whether a project is becoming passive, staying active, or consuming too much energy for too little return. That kind of clarity is powerful because it removes the fantasy from the process.

It also makes the progress emotionally real. You don’t just say, “I’m building something.” You can say, “I spent 40 hours and €300 on this project, and now it generates €75 a month and growing.” That is a freedom portfolio metric. It turns abstract ambition into a visible path.

You can use the filters that I outlined earlier and rate every project according to these filters over time.

This is one reason I built the Financial Freedom Mentor app in the first place. I wanted to see my own financial life more clearly. Then I realized that if it helped me, it might help others too. That’s usually a good sign you’re onto something useful. In the Income Section you can track and manage all sorts of income and in particular the effectiveness of side projects.

Build fewer things, but build them well

The freedom portfolio is not about collecting side projects like trophies. It’s about building a small number of meaningful assets that support a freer life over time. That could be a tiny house rental, a van rental, a coaching program, a useful ebook, a digital product, an app, or something else entirely. The exact mix doesn’t matter as much as the philosophy behind it.

Choose projects that fit your skills, your joy, your leverage, and your principles. Keep the overhead low. Protect your focus. Track your time and money. And give the project long enough to compound before you judge it.

That is how you build a life that is not only richer in money, but most importantly richer in time, meaning, and room to breathe.

In a couple of days, I will launch the Financial Freedom Mentor on Product Hunt. I would really appreciate if you want to check it out there. If you like it, give it some love.

My app on Product Hunt

Feel free to leave a comment or a ❤️ below.

If you’ve read my FIRE guide from January, you already know the math: your FIRE number is 25 times your annual expenses. Lower that number, and freedom arrives faster. Reduce it dramatically, and freedom arrives soon.

That’s where minimalism stops being a bedroom aesthetic and becomes a financial weapon.

It’s not about wearing potato sacks or eating ramen forever. It’s about designing a life where your fixed costs (=the silent thieves of time and freedom) are so low that even a modest income (or side projects) carries you across the finish line. Tiny house instead of mortgage. Bike instead of car payment. Fewer subscriptions, simpler meals, less maintenance. Each cut compounds into years of your life.

Let me show you how this plays out in real numbers and real life, from my own tiny house experiment and the Financial Freedom Mentor app I’ve built to make this visible.

The fixed cost trap most people never escape

Your biggest expenses aren’t the random Amazon splurges or that one big vacation. They’re the recurring costs that own you month after month: rent/mortgage, car payments, insurance, utilities, subscriptions, storage units for stuff you never use.

A typical city apartment dweller might spend monthly:

• €1,200 rent

• €400 car + insurance

• €200 utilities/internet

• €150 subscriptions + misc

That’s €1,950/month just to “exist.” At 25x, you’re €585,000 away from freedom. Even with a solid income, that feels like a life sentence.

Now picture this minimalist baseline:

• €400 tiny house (owned outright or low mortgage)

• €0 car (bike/public transport)

• €50 insurance

• €30 basic internet

• €50 minimal subscriptions

€530/month. Your FIRE number drops to €159,000. Same income, same savings rate, but freedom arrives three and a half times faster.

The gap between those two lives? Not suffering. Intentional subtraction. Minimalism doesn’t make you poorer. It makes freedom cheaper.

Tiny house vs. big mortgage: the numbers don’t lie

My Viking Tiny House Berkana Othala cost a fraction of a city apartment deposit. No massive mortgage. No property taxes eating 1-2% yearly. No heating bills for 200m² you barely use.

Living small means:

• Less maintenance. No lawn to mow, no garage to organize, no second bathroom to clean.

• Lower utilities. Solar covers most needs. Wood stove for winter. Propane for cooking/shower.

• No “space creep.” You don’t buy more stuff because there’s no room for it.

In my FIRE article, I used €40,000/year as a minimalist baseline. With a tiny house, you can hit €24,000/year and still eat well, travel seasonally, and invest aggressively. That’s a 40% smaller FIRE number. If you’re saving €1,000/month now, you shave six years off your timeline.

The app shows this instantly: modify your current expenses with respect to experimental changes and watch your freedom date jump forward.

Car vs. bike: freedom or payments?

Cars are the perfect minimalism target. Most people don’t need one daily. They need the feeling of optionality. But that €400/month payment (plus insurance, fuel, parking, repairs) is a freedom anchor.

Depending on where you live, getting rid of a car is not always feasible. But downgrading is feasible. Or just get a shit, cheap, reliable car which you don’t care about.

If you reduce your car related cost by €380/month, then the FIRE impact is €114,000 less to save. Nearly two years faster.

The mental shift is huge too. No parking stress. No “is this dent covered?” anxiety. More movement baked into the day.

The app audit might reveal: “€4,800/year on wheels you use 3 days a week.” Redirect half to investments, and compound interest does the rest.

Subscriptions vs. sovereignty

The average person pays €100-200/month for Netflix, Spotify, gym memberships, apps, cloud storage—most barely used. Minimalism asks: “Does this serve my freedom or just fill silence?”

I run lean:

• No paid music service

• Substack (free creativity)

• Basic cloud for work

• I do pay for Crossfit classes because health and fitness are my priority.

If you can reclaim €900/year, over 25 years at 7% return? €47,000. Almost enough for a whole tiny house or years of semi-retirement runway.

The app’s “Freedom Date” feature gives you a visual cue how far or close you are to financial freedom.

Simpler meals, bigger freedom

Food is where minimalism meets health. I cook simply: eggs from neighbors, soon homegrown greens, bulk shopping, or seasonal market produce. €300/month, delicious, nutrient-dense.

Contrast with delivery apps, or pre-made meals: €600-800/month easy.

Savings: €300/month = €9,000/year = €225,000 FIRE impact.

Two decades faster.

Minimalist eating isn’t deprivation. It’s intentional: fewer decisions, less waste, better fuel for training and focus.

It is also an act of balance. Because sometimes I do eat out. Sometimes it’s necessary and it’s all about the right balance.

The time richness multiplier

Money freedom is the goal, but time richness is the reward. Minimalism doesn’t just lower costs—it frees hours.

• Tiny house = 10 hours/week less cleaning/maintenance

• No car = 5 hours/week less driving/errands

• Fewer subscriptions = 3 hours/week less “content overwhelm”

• Simple meals = 7 hours/week less shopping/planning

• No time wasting people around = priceless

25 hours/week = a full-time job reclaimed.

That’s time for passion projects (aSubstack, a new app idea), training (hill sprints, pull-ups), relationships, reading, studying or just staring at mountains. Time you can’t buy back once it’s spent.

The passion project accelerator

Lower costs + more time = perfect conditions for side projects that can become passive income—the holy grail of financial freedom. With a €24k/year baseline, you don’t need €100k salary to invest aggressively. €2-3k/month savings compounds fast.

One branch on my own path: engineer → corporate sales → tiny house + writing + building → Financial Freedom Mentor app. Each step leveraged the last. Lower costs funded the risk. More time built the skill.

Your “freedom surplus” (savings beyond necessities) becomes rocket fuel for:

• Digital products (ebooks, courses, apps)

• Rental income (tiny house or Airbnbs)

• Dividend portfolios

• Skill businesses (coaching, consulting)

• Angel investing

The app forecasts this encourages to change habits via Money Micro Lessons and Passive Income project monitoring.

Making the shift: three steps

1. Audit ruthlessly. Tag every expense: Freedom (health, growth), Neutral (basic needs), Noise (status, distraction). Cut 80% of Noise.

2. Replace, don’t just delete. Car → e-bike rental. Subscriptions → library + free tools. Big kitchen → one perfect knife + cast iron.

3. Test for 90 days. Track time gained, money saved, freedom felt. Adjust. Minimalism compounds through iteration.

The numbers speak

Below is just an example but it’s realistic and useful to make a point.

€481k less to save. 13+ years faster to freedom.

That’s not theory. That’s my life. That’s what the app models for thousands of users.

Your time-rich life starts now

Minimalism isn’t anti-money. It’s pro-freedom.

Every fixed cost you eliminate is a brick removed from your personal prison. Every hour reclaimed is a deposit in your time bank.

You don’t need to go full tiny house tomorrow. Pick one category. Audit it. Cut 30%. Feel the air come back into your lungs.

If you’re ready to turn “stuff-rich” into “time-rich,” subscribe to The Rich Minimalist. More minimalist money moves, tiny house experiments, and freedom math—straight from the mountains.

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When Joe Simpson and Simon Yates set out to climb Siula Grande, a remote 6,344-meter peak in the Peruvian Andes in 1985, they knew it was a first-ever winter ascent. What they didn’t anticipate was one of the most harrowing survival stories ever told—one that strips life down to its absolute minimum and reveals what it takes to keep going when everything is lost.

This isn’t just a mountaineering tale. It’s a masterclass in minimalist survival: how to function with zero gear, no food, shattered bones, and no hope, using only your body, mind, and the simplest possible decisions. For anyone chasing health, freedom, or a simpler life, Simpson’s story carries lessons that go far beyond the mountain.

The climb goes wrong fast

Siula Grande was remote, technical, and unclimbed in winter for good reason. The two Brits pushed hard, reached the summit, but disaster struck on the descent. Simpson slipped, fell, and shattered his right leg. Tibia and fibula snapped clean through in sub-zero conditions.

They were still high on the mountain, miles from base camp, with no helicopter rescue possible. Yates did the only ethical thing: he tried to lower Simpson down the glacier using ropes. But when Simpson went over a cliff edge and hung suspended in a crevasse—too heavy to pull up, too injured to climb—Yates made the hardest call imaginable. With both their lives on the line, he cut the rope.

Simpson dropped into darkness, 50 feet down into an ice cave system. Yates, believing his friend dead, descended alone to base camp.

Zero to survival: the crawl begins

What happened next defies normal human limits.

Simpson didn’t die. He landed on a snow ledge inside the crevasse, assessed his broken leg, and realized he had two choices: stay and perish, or move. With no food, no water, no shelter, and a leg that barely functioned, he began crawling.

For the next three days, Simpson dragged himself across glacier, rock, and boulder fields toward base camp—about 8 kilometers over brutal terrain. His right leg was useless, held together only by willpower. He had no gear left except the clothes on his back and an ice axe. No tent, no stove, no first aid.

He melted snow in his mouth for hydration. He rationed his mental energy. Every few meters, shock and hypothermia would knock him unconscious. He’d wake up, reorient, and crawl again.

The minimalist mindset that saved him

What makes this story so relevant to minimalism isn’t just the physical constraints—it’s Simpson’s mental framework. With everything stripped away, survival came down to one ridiculously simple principle:

One more step.

Not “get to base camp.” Not “survive the night.” Just: move your body a little farther. Right now. Then do it again.

This is pure minimalist action. When life hands you an impossible situation, you don’t try to solve the whole problem. You solve the next 30 seconds. Then the next 30 seconds after that. No grand strategy, no five-year plan—just the next move.

Simpson later wrote that he broke the crawl into micro-goals: “Get to that rock. Now get past it. Now rest for five minutes.” When pain or cold became overwhelming, he’d talk to himself like a coach: “Just move your left leg forward. Good. Now the right knee. Okay, that’s progress.”

In a tiny house or off-grid setup, you live this principle often. Obviously not on that level of severity but in terms of mindset. Solar panels fail? Fix the next connection. Water runs low? Check the next valve. Run out of wood for the stove? Find some dry branches outside or just put on another jumper. You are constantly inventing micro solutions for micro problems.

Minimalism teaches you to master small, deliberate actions that compound when chaos hits.

Physical minimalism under extreme pressure

Simpson’s body became his only tool. With no crutches, no painkillers, no help, he learned to hop on his good leg while dragging the broken one. When hopping failed, he’d lower himself backward down slopes using only his ice axe and upper body strength.

He averaged perhaps 100–200 meters per hour. Frostbite blackened his fingers. Dehydration and exposure dropped his core temperature dangerously low. Yet he kept moving because stopping meant death.

This mirrors the Rich Minimalist approach to fitness and health: your body is your ultimate capital. No gym needed. No supplements needed. Just consistent, functional movement that works when everything else fails. Simpson couldn’t do pull-ups or hill sprints, but his baseline strength, built from years of climbing, carried him when luxury wasn’t an option.

The psychological edge: refusing the victim story

Halfway through the crawl, Simpson reached a point where base camp should have been visible. Instead, he faced a massive, impassable boulder field. In his mind, this was checkmate. He’d given everything, and it still wasn’t enough.

But then something clicked. He refused to accept “failure” as the ending. Instead of collapsing into despair, he scanned the horizon again—and spotted a faint line that might be a path. It was base camp’s access route, winding through the impossible terrain.

That mental pivot is minimalism: reject clutter (even mental clutter like “this is hopeless”) and focus only on observable reality and the next action. In your own life, this looks like ignoring the “impossible” obstacles (debt, health issues, job dissatisfaction) and asking:

“What one thing can I do right now that moves me forward?”

Reunion and the bigger lesson

Against astronomical odds, Simpson staggered into base camp three and a half days after being cut loose. Yates, who had stayed to mourn his friend, couldn’t believe his eyes. Simpson weighed 15 kilos less, was frostbitten and septic, but alive.

The story became the book Touching the Void (later a film), but the real value isn’t the drama—it’s the framework.

When everything external disappears, you’re left with:

1. One body to move.

2. One mind to direct it.

3. One goal: the next step.

No gear. No team. No backup plan. Just you, deciding to continue.

What this means for a minimalist life

You don’t need to break your leg in the Andes to live these lessons. Simpson’s crawl translates directly to tiny house life, financial independence, and daily health:

• Health: Train for function, not appearance. Can you hop on one leg for 8 kilometers when needed? Build baseline competence.

• Freedom: Every possession you own should either serve survival or function and rarely joy. If it does neither, cut it. Simpson traveled with zero excess.

• Work/Creativity: When stuck, shrink your goal to “one more sentence,” “one more rep,” “one more connection.” Progress compounds.

• Mindset: Reality doesn’t care about your story. Focus only on what you can control and act on it now.

Most survival tales glorify gear or luck. Simpson’s story glorifies the human capacity to act with less—much less—than we think possible. In a world that sells you more stuff, more comfort, more insurance against every risk, Touching the Void reminds you:

Your real equipment is internal. And it’s probably enough.

The next time you face a boulder field in your own life—financial stress, health setback, creative block—channel Simpson. Ignore the overwhelming landscape. Look for the next step. Take it.

If stories like this resonate with your pursuit of health, freedom, and minimalist living, subscribe to The Rich Minimalist.

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If you like stories like this, you may also like my previous posts:

• Yvon Chouinard: The Reluctant Billionaire Who Turned Patagonia into a Minimalist Blueprint for Real Sustainability

• Helen Thayer: Walking to the Edge of the World (and Finding Herself)

• How Ernest Hemingway Survived Two Plane Crashes in Two Days: Grit, Humor and Lessons for Life

• Göran Kropp’s Epic Journey: Cycling from Sweden to Everest and Back — Lessons in Grit, Minimalism, and Unstoppable Adventure

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This February was incredibly beautiful on the land. I had quite some storms at the beginning. Thank god, I decided to anchor down the house. It was quite shaky. But the second half was beautiful, very warm and due to the heavy rainfalls in January I had plenty of water.

Ahh, the little wins!

My February posts were about turning philosophy into practice: what grows in your garden, how you start your day, and how you spend with intention. These are the small systems that compound into real freedom.

My little standard reminder: Subscribers to The Rich Minimalist get my book Solar Serenity: Designing Your Off-Grid Tiny Home (Amazon best-seller) for free.

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If you haven’t received the book yet, or if you have any other feedback, send me a message:

Happy reading,

Manfred

On to the summaries of this month’s posts:

Minimalism vs. Frugality: The Subtle Difference That Changes Everything

This post unpacks why minimalism isn’t about being “cheap” but about intentional choices that align money with freedom, health, and peace—using frugality as a tool, not an identity.

Read it here.

Growing Your Own Food in a Tiny House: The Minimalist Guide to Easy Self-Sufficiency

A practical starter guide for off-grid gardeners focusing on easy, high-yield crops like kale, beans, potatoes, and herbs that fit tiny spaces and mountain climates while cutting grocery dependence. Also, stay tuned for further progress report on my little farming experiments.

Read it here.

My Tiny House Morning Routine: Slow Living, Strong Coffee, and a Calm Start in the Mountains

I share my daily ritual—natural wake-up, coffee with mountain views, infrastructure walks, cold showers, neighbor’s eggs, then focused work—and why it replaced stress with clarity and freedom.

Read it here.

February Podcasts

Minimalism vs. Frugality: Why Your Tiny House Isn’t About Being Cheap

I break down the subtle but crucial difference between minimalism and frugality, especially in the context of tiny house and simple living. You’ll learn how frugality can help as a short-term tool, why it often leads to scarcity and guilt if it becomes an identity, and how minimalism uses money, time, and energy as levers to design a life of freedom, health, and lightness.

Listen here.

If You Only Did One Exercise: The Power of the Squat

I explain why squats are the ultimate minimalist movement for real life, how to do them safely as a beginner, and how to turn everyday chores and time in nature into simple “fitness in the wild” workouts

Listen here.

If you’re enjoying these field-tested ideas from tiny house mountainside life, subscribe to The Rich Minimalist for monthly mindset shifts and practical tools toward health, freedom, and less noise.

Thank you for being part of The Rich Minimalist community! My goal is to share practical insights into minimalist living, health, and freedom.

Revisit these favorites, and let me know any feedback. Please share with friends:

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Stay healthy, stay free,

Manfred

There’s a very specific kind of silence when you wake up in a tiny house secluded in nature. No traffic, no sirens, no upstairs neighbor dragging a chair at 6 a.m. The soundtrack is mostly birds, wind in the trees, and occasionally rain tapping on the roof—well sometimes a lot of rain, or even storms, scary!

That’s how my mornings start now: not with a brutal alarm clock on a phone, but with natural light and the rhythm of the place. It’s still early, but it’s a different kind of earl, one that feels chosen instead of imposed.

This morning routine didn’t appear overnight. It’s my answer to years of rushing into the day, scrolling emails before getting out of bed, and wolfing down breakfast while already stressed.

In the tiny house I want the opposite: a slow, deliberate start that supports health, creativity, and a minimalist, off-grid life. Every step in this routine has a purpose, even if on the surface it looks simple.

Waking up with light, not alarms

Most days I wake up when the light starts to enter the tiny house. The space is small, so the first rays of sun make a difference quickly. I don’t use an alarm clock if I can avoid it. Instead, I let my body sync with the natural rhythm around me. In practice that still means getting up fairly early, but without the aggressive “fight or flight” of a ringtone—also known as fucking ringtone.

I do this for a few reasons. First, it’s better for my nervous system. I don’t begin the day with a spike of stress. I ease into my day. Second, living off-grid means I’m more aware of daylight as a resource. Sunlight powers the solar system (I save energy), warms the house, and sets the tempo for outside tasks. Waking with the light keeps me aligned with that reality instead of forcing my day on top of it.

There’s also a psychological shift: when you wake naturally, you start the day feeling that time is yours, not the world’s. For someone chasing health and freedom, that feeling matters a lot.

The ritual of fresh, black coffee

Once I’m up, the first deliberate act is coffee. Nothing fancy, just good beans, ground fresh, brewed black, on the gas stove in my Italian moka. In a tiny house you feel every smell and sound more intensely, and the scent of coffee filling a small wooden space is one of the simple luxuries I never get tired of.

I drink it slowly, usually standing by the window or sitting where I can see the trees and mountains. Or in bed. There’s no rush to “get going” yet. This is a small daily ceremony: it marks the transition from sleep to wakefulness, from passive to intentional. I’m not checking the news, not opening my inbox. I’m just there, with a hot mug, watching the day arrive. Maybe I start thinking ahead what needs to be done this day.

Coffee, in this context, is less about caffeine and more about attention. It anchors me in the present moment and reminds me why I’m here: to live more simply, closer to nature, with fewer distractions.

A walk around the house and the land: inhaling nature and checking the systems

After that first coffee, I step outside for a small walk around the house, the shed, and the bit of land that belongs to this place. I call it my “control tour”, but it’s also my way of inhaling nature first thing.

On one level, it’s pure enjoyment. I breathe in the cold air, listen to the birds waking up, feel the ground under my shoes. I look at the mountains, the snow in the distance, the forest, the changing sky. It’s a mini-meditation without sitting on a cushion. Just a human being standing outside their home, acknowledging where they are.

On another level, it’s practical and essential for off-grid life. I check if the solar panels and especially the cabling look fine, if anything has fallen or shifted during the night. I look at the water system, pipes, and connections to see if there’s any visible damage from wind, frost, or animals. In the city you assume these things “just work”. In the wilderness, you learn quickly that prevention is much easier than repair. This walk is my daily audit: is everything okay with the critical infrastructure that keeps my tiny living lifestyle alive?

The combination of those two purposes—nature and maintenance—makes the ritual feel very grounded. I’m not just a guest here. I’m responsible for a small ecosystem of wood, metal, water, and wires.

A quick cold shower (sometimes)

Depending on the day and how I feel, I’ll sometimes take a quick cold shower. It’s great for recovery when my muscles feel sore and to activate all my bodily systems. Cold water in the mountains has a way of making you very awake, very quickly. Doing it cold also saves energy (no need to warm it up).

I do this mainly for recovery after heavy training days and for the mental reset. Cold exposure helps with circulation, muscle recovery, and a cascade of health benefits, but for me the biggest effect is psychological. Stepping into cold water first thing is a micro-decision that says: “I can do hard things on purpose.” It trains mental toughness and it sets a tone of agency for the rest of the day. If I can’t cope with this little inconvenience how would I be able to handle real hardship?

In a tiny house, you’re already close to the elements. A cold shower is like shaking hands with them. Briefly uncomfortable, yes, but afterward there’s this pleasant sense of having pressed a reset button on your mind. I have never regretted cold shower.

Breakfast: eggs from happy neighbors

After moving and waking up my body, breakfast is simple but high quality. Often it’s eggs from my neighbor, who keeps happy, free-range chickens that live a much better life than anything you’d find in industrial farming. There’s something grounding about knowing exactly where your food came from, and in this case, it’s literally just on the other side of the hill.

I usually pair the eggs with something basic, maybe some bread, maybe some vegetables, maybe ham. The point is to fuel my body with real, local food. This is part of the minimalist philosophy too: fewer ingredients, better quality, less processing.

Transition to work and creative flow

Only after all that—waking, coffee, walk, maybe a cold shower, breakfast—do I sit down to work or dive into a creative project. By then, my body is awake, my head is clear, and I’ve already had some light movement and fresh air.

Work, for me, might mean writing for The Rich Minimalist, working on an app or program, preparing a podcast episode, planning future tiny house improvements, or doing my “regular” job remotely. Whatever it is, the morning routine builds a calm runway into it. I’m not arriving at the laptop already stressed, hungry, and overstimulated. I’m arriving ready.

The tiny house itself helps with this. The space is small and intentionally set up: there isn’t a lot of visual noise. No clutter, and I know where everything is. The desk or table becomes a focused zone. Outside the window, there’s nature. Inside, there’s just enough. This combination of physical minimalism and a steady morning structure makes deep work much more likely.

Why this routine matters so much to me

On paper, my routine is nothing revolutionary. Wake with light, drink black coffee, walk outside, sometimes take a cold shower, eat good eggs, then work. But the power is in how it feels, and in what it replaces.

It replaces waking up with a jolt to an alarm and immediately checking messages. It replaces rushing through a shower, grabbing whatever (junk) food is available, and sitting in traffic. It replaces starting the day already behind, and then constantly trying to catch up.

Instead, this routine does a few important things:

• It respects my nervous system: starting slowly lowers anxiety and gives me more emotional bandwidth for the rest of the day.

• It connects me to the place I live: the land, the weather, the systems that keep the tiny house running. I’m not disconnected from the basics of life. And I built all this, so it also makes me feel proud and good already in the morning.

• It reinforces my values: health, freedom, minimalism, and nature are not just ideas I write about—they’re baked into my morning actions.

• It protects my attention: by delaying screens and reducing external demands and stimuli, I keep a clear head for creative work and big decisions. I am definitely more productive here in the wild.

In short, my tiny house morning routine is a daily practice in living the life I say I want: slower, more intentional, more connected to reality and less dominated by noise.

If you’re reading this from a city apartment or a busy house, you don’t need mountains and a tiny house to take something from this. You can still experiment: wake once a week without an alarm, drink your coffee without your phone—and especially with all the sugary crap you get in most coffee shops, take a short walk outside your building and just notice what’s around you, choose one simple, real breakfast. See how your mind feels when you give yourself twenty minutes of quiet before handing your attention to the world.

And if you ever make it out to a tiny house in the wilderness—maybe even one with Viking runes and a view of the Pyrenees—you’ll already have the first pieces of your own slow, minimalist morning routine ready to plug into that life.

If you enjoyed this kind of mindset shift musings and you want more pieces that challenge the default settings of time, money, stuff, and freedom, consider subscribing to The Rich Minimalist. I’ll keep sharing practical, philosophy-backed ideas to help you build a life that’s lighter, healthier, and truly yours.

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