There was a time in my life when I was one of the Joneses.
I had a truck, a Jeep, and a Cadillac
An amazing boat.
A side-by-side UTV
A house in Georgia.
Three acres in North Carolina.
A condo in Mesa, Arizona.
Trailer for my mom in Yuma.
All at the same fucking time.
From the outside, it may have looked like success. On the inside, it felt like maintenance—constant, expensive, and exhausting. The more I bought, the more I worried. The more I owned, the more I was owned by it.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit, but eventually it clicked:
None of that stuff was buying me freedom.
It was giving me stress.
Letting go wasn’t a loss—it was a release.
A Cadillac CTS, a Ford F-150, a Jeep Rubicon, a Sea Ray 220 boat, utility trailers, and a Polaris side-by-side UTV—all lined up like some personal dealership. Add in three properties, and it turned into a private parking lot paired with a full-time insurance nightmare.
At the time, it felt like progress. Like proof, I was “doing well.”In reality, it was just layers of obligation—payments, maintenance, insurance, storage, stress—stacked on top of each other.
Nothing about it felt light.
Nothing about it felt free.
The pictures below aren’t nostalgia for me anymore—it’s a reminder of how easy it is to confuse accumulation with success, and how heavy life gets when everything you own starts owning you back.
I’m grateful I figured it out earlier than most: I didn’t actually want stuff—I wanted freedom, and travel was the clearest path to it.
I watch so many people stuck in the same cycle I was in before. Month to month. Payment to payment. Always chasing the next thing, yet somehow there’s never enough. More income just leads to more obligations, and the finish line keeps moving.
That pattern isn’t unique to one place. You see it everywhere—especially in Canada and the United States, but plenty of other places too.
Once I stepped off that treadmill, things got lighter. Less ownership, fewer anchors, more flexibility. I stopped measuring progress by what I accumulated and started measuring it by how freely I could move.
For me, choosing travel over stuff wasn’t about sacrifice.
It was about choosing the life I actually wanted.
I have downsized substantially, keeping only my Jeep in AZ, my truck in Mexico, an eBike, and a scooter.
It’s a hell of a lot less stressful having time-freedom flex instead of just more stuff.
Stuff demands attention.
Time gives it back.
One ties you down.
The other lets you move.
I’ll take time—every single time.
