Love it or Leave it. Steve Jobs’ Advice on Saving Money
Jobs was a famous believer in minimalism. Apple devices even today are stripped down to true necessities. As the headline of Apple’s first marketing brochure proclaimed in 1977, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Jobs took this design approach even further into his life from his appreciation of Japanese Zen to how he furnished his home. In an interview, former Apple CEO John Sculley recalled a visit he made to Jobs’ house.
“I remember going into Steve’s house and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn’t believe in having lots of things around but he was incredibly careful in what he selected.”
Jobs often referenced William Morris’s great quote:
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” — William Morris
This same advice can be applied to spending & saving money. Lowering your monthly spending doesn’t have to come at great cost to your life and happiness.
If you take “useful” from Morris’s quote to mean true necessities and “beautiful” to mean something that truly makes you happy. Then you’ll find that many of us can cut our spending and increase our savings with no impact to our true happiness.
The key to financial success is not depriving yourself, it’s being mindful and honest with yourself about what truly matters. We hope to inspire this belief through the Tip Yourself community. Join us.
