There are two types of frugal people.
There’s the person who’s living quite comfortably, and doesn’t really need to worry about money for basic needs like food or medicine. He/she chooses to live this lifestyle in order to enjoy the benefits of frugal living, and is more concerned with saving for retirement or enjoying life. The other person does need to worry about money: because for some reason or the other, they don’t have as much money as they think they need. It may be that they’ve lost a job recently, or had some kind of emergency. This is forced belt-tightening.
Many of us may have been in the second category at some point in our lives (or may still be there). It’s that stage where you ask, “what else can I do?”
Having lived through the second stage, I’ve found that my approach to money was very different when I had to pinch every penny. This situation is basically all about going minimal.
Even if you don’t have to go so extreme, here’s how I approached extreme frugality:
- Buy nothing.
If you have no extra money, there’s no way you can spend on extras. Don’t buy things on credit either. Of course, the caveat is, you’ll have to buy it if it’s an essential (food, medicine, etc). But never buy something that’s not absolutely necessary, and try to pare down the essentials. I don’t consider alchohol an essential – the good stuff is insanely expensive, and the bad stuff makes you ill.
I’ve found that this approach has worked best for me when I physically restrict myself from entering a shop unless I have a shopping list, and of course, if I block ebay on my browser. It’s an unpopular piece of advice, but this is the one way I’ve saved the most money.
I am actually an impulse clothing buyer. I’m ashamed to say that I used to buy cheap clothing on sale… and then never wear them. I also used to buy random things from the Dollar Stores, in the belief that they’d come to use someday. Obviously, they hardly ever did.
I realized I was being wasteful and cluttering up my house, but somehow I just couldn’t stop. However, now that I just don’t allow myself to even enter a store (especially not clothing or Dollar stores) I haven’t managed to buy random, unusable items recently. - Do everything yourself.
Stores charge more for the services they add, so if you’re looking to save money, you should ideally try to provide those services yourself.
How so? Well, I’ve found that eating out is always a more expensive event than cooking at home. Processed vegetables are more expensive than those you have to wash and cut. Plumbers are expensive. And so forth.
So basically, if you have the time, try to do things from scratch by yourself. Since we need to eat everyday, cooking at home from scratch would definitely be on the list. There are other services that you can do yourself too. Learn sewing and fix up or even make your own clothes. Learn haircutting and cut your own hair. If you’re a girlie girl (I am, at times) learn how to give yourself a home facial and pedicure.
However, don’t mess with things that, if botched up, will be expensive to fix. For me, this includes things like plumbing: I could never fix my own toilet. At the same time, it may be worthwhile to build up such skills, especially home repair skills if you own your own house. - Get used items.
If you need something that’s a reusable item (furniture, clothes) try to get it used. Ask you friends and neighbours if they’ve got something to give away, join freecycle, try to get by with borrowing (especially in the case of books), or buy second-hand. It’s really worthwhile to learn to fix things so that you can use something old with confidence – this applies heavily in the case of clothes and furniture.
Don’t stock up with cheap or free items, though. Instead… - Do with less
Use less house and pay lower rent/mortgage/utilities. Use solar power, or at least try to use less electricity and water. Use a smaller car, or take public transport. Living in Melbourne, I don’t love peak hour trains, but I’m saving almost $900/month by not buying a car.
Similarly, buy less stuff for yourself and your house. This will help prevent waste, and will help you to… - Maintain things.
This is actually one of those things that’s expensive in the short-run, but cheaper in the long run, so we’ve got to do a bit of a balancing act. Which is one of the reasons I like minimal living – if it’s not something you really need, give it away because it’ll need maintaining.
For me, maintaining things means keeping them usuable. Do things like run a virus check on your PC, mend your clothes (before they rip even more), clean your house (before it becomes pest-infected and you need to spend even more on pest control).
These are the things that have worked for me, and the kind of things that make people believe that frugal people are boring and have no life. However, this is not how most frugal people spend most of their lives, it’s more like an emergency plan. For someone who’s really worried about money, “having a life” is generally not on their list of priorities.
If you’re not in an emergency belt-tightening situation, these actions can still help you, because they form the basis of most forms of frugal living. You can just look at the extreme money-saving options, and then try to modify them so that you can have some more fun, a bit more time, and less stress. For instance, you may like to incorporate and modify the rule about doing it all yourself, so that you almost always cook at home, but use some pre-prepared time saving items, and occasionally splurge out on fancy dishes.When you’re not in an emergency belt-tightening situation, you also have more leeway and can afford to buy good quality items that will last longer, and make you happier.
Hopefully, some of my future posts about frugal living will be less extreme, and I can talk about how I incorporate frugality into my life without feeling like I have no life, as well as how I spend money to be happier.
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