Have you ever sold everything you own and gotten all new stuff?

Everything? Literally down to my music collection and last pair of underpants?

Could you please define your parameters? This seems like a fun question, so could you help us with the playing field?

@Love_my_doggie lol, yes everything! Even your music (probably how I feel about my art). Added details~

@Esedess Thank you! I look forward to reading what you’ve posted.

This brings up the memory of the guy who sold everything he owned
on Ebay and it really caught on fast. Even his sugar packets were bid
on and everyone wanted a “piece” of what this guy was doing. Then I
think he wrote a book or photographed everything not sure but I thought
it was pretty cool.

Furniture: Danish midcentury modern from the era. Handmade.

Cars: Three Honda/Acuras from the ‘90’s

Neckties: Many from mid ‘60’s. Handmade.

Watch: “60’s multijewelled automatic Movado. Handmade.

Home audio: Bang&Olufsen systems from late ‘70’s through early ‘90’s.

Road bicycle frame: Columbus SL double butted stainless steel with early ‘90’s geometry. Handmade.

Leather jacket: Band collar, plain front motorcycle jacket from late ‘60’s. Handmade.

Shoes: Perforated white leather gibsons from late ‘70’s. Handmade.

Why would I replace this with new stuff?

@SecondHandStoke
I understand the logic in that, but this is a concept piece.
For the sake of your question, against chance, let’s say you sold all your stuff and used the money as capitol to start a business. Within a year you’re making more than you ever had in your life. You’re your own boss. You work your own hours, or don’t. You make enough to buy back everything you’d lost and more. Enough to pursue dreams you’ve never had the means to entertain seriously. That’s why you would replace that stuff. Because it’s just stuff, and maybe you could trade it in for a free-er existence overall.

Or it could all go to shit~ Granted… Like I said, “for the sake of your question, against chance…”

@MooCows
That’s interesting! Never heard of it. I’ll have to look it up!

In early 2012, I sold off everything I owned parcticly, 40+ boxes of books, art, wine, extra scuba equipment, kite surfing equipment, 4 touring bikes, sold the car, sold all the shit that had accumulated in my garage for 20+ years, all my furniture, redundant kitchenware, sent a ton of electronics off to various charities that could use them, sent a ton of dress clothes to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, sent a bunch family things to my niece in Chicago and then I moved onto my boat. Every thing I needed to survive was on the boat. All I brought with me was my basic toiletries and my cat, Buddy. .

Got rid of everything, sold the townhouse and off I went, first on week-long voyages, then on Dec. 19th, 2012, I headed out of Key West harbor for Celestún, Yucatán. When I got there the following afternoon, the newspaper headlines were screaming in 2-inch bold type that 20 grammar school children had been shot by a madman somewhere in Connecticut, USA.

My vessel hasn’t been in US waters since.

@Espiritus_Corvus
A life sailing around the world on your own boat sounds like a pretty amazing life! This is exactly one of the possibilities I was thinking of when I posed this question.

What prompted you to make such a drastic change suddenly?

Oh, well, certainly! Isn’t it nice that money grows on trees?

@Esedess Well, it’s a long story.

I was a medical research coordinator during the last years of my nursing career. It was good, interesting work, but it was primarily a desk job and I was getting way out of shape. One day, I had a heart attack. Not a bad one, but a good shot over the bow. I decided to change my life. I started going to the gym to build strength, then started cycling-camping, kayaking-camping, surfing, scuba diving—all the things that I had done in my twenties and had fallen by the wayside in a settled, twenty year marriage to a good, but very civilized woman.. She was a nurse anesthetist, but here career was all she wanted to pursue in life. I was developing other ideas.

One day this old man I knew from down at the marina I used to dip my kayak in sold me a 22-foot Catalina sloop for $500 bucks on the spot. I hadn’t sailed since I was in my teens, and hadn’t even thought about it, but this boat was worth about a grand a foot. I couldn’t believe it. It was about 30 years old, but he had kept it in pristine condition. He was arthritic and couldn’t raise the sails anymore and his wife was too ill to come down and drink coffee with him on his beloved sloop, so he just polished it all day long. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that his wife needed him at home 24/7 and since I talked to him almost everyday, he just handed it over to me and got it over with as painlessly as possible.

I took sailing lessons with it, eventually go a sixpack captain’s license good for 100 tons displacement, got ISA certs, PADI and NAUI certs as a divemaster, took the boat out on charters to help pay for the upkeep, took people diving, spent almost all my time on it. Soon, I traded up to a loaded Morgan 33 and couple of years later traded up to a Hunter 42, fully loaded with radar, fish finders, EPIRB, mast, deck and underwater hull lights, Yanmar diesel inboard, el gernerators, solar and wind backup, HVAC, internet and satcoms, full galley—the whole nine yards.

In the meantime I got an amicable divorce and moved into a townhouse near the marina. But I knew I couldn’t afford both the townhouse and the boat—boats will eat you alive—and I knew after that heart attack, my days were numbered. So, what the hell, I chose the boat over dying at my desk. I began taking time off to do some deep water sailing to Mexico, the Bahamas Jamaica and got some good blue water experience and soon it was 2012 and the primary investigator, my doc that I’d working with for ten years decided to retire.

I counted up my assets, sold everything off, took my cat, toothbrush and a couple of laptops with me to the boat and just took off for Mexico. I had transferred my music, book and film collection to a couple of terabyte harddrives months before this.

I really didn’t thing I wasn’t coming back, but the Newtown thing kinda set off an existential crisis, I suppose, and when I pulled out of Celstun, I just headed south to the Lesser Antilles instead of back to Key West. Kind of just set my sails and rudder another direction without worrying about what came next. It was a good decision. Life is good out here and the blue water sailing community is a tight tribe. Just check their blogs on the net.

You might say that I was saved by a heart attack.

Sorry about the length. Ha. I type really fast.

Selling your stuff for money is no way to make money.

Yes. Once I left all of my furniture and household items for my daughter. I had to furnish my place where I moved into. Then I moved from one coast to the other and it is cost prohibitive to move that far so I sold everything I had bought, boxed up what I wanted to keep and Fedexed it to my new location. Then I had to buy all new furniture. It was fun, in an expensive kind of way. ;)

@Espiritus_Corvus That is a great story! Honestly, making me rethink my own direction in life. There’s just so many possibilities out there. I’ve actually got a fisherman friend who is slowly moving toward that path, but feels very lost right now. I’ll have to share your bit with him. Thank you!!