View Full Version : How Has Your Frugality Evolved?
As I was reading the "Where are they now?" thread, it made me think about how my own frugality has evolved over the 10+ years I have been reading this forum. When I started, I was just out of grad school, driving an elderly used car and getting my dial-up internet for free from the university I had just graduated from. I didn't do a lot with coupons, but I was mistress of the loss-leader sale and once constructed an entire meal (for guests!--who were also poor ex-grad students, so glad to get it) out of free items from a grocery store promotion. I cooked at home a lot--my eating style was lots of cheap carbs with a little meat for flavoring and some inexpensive produce. I was a regular at the local library and rental videos were a weekly treat, especially because the video store had a deal where you could prepay for 20 and get a better price. No cable, but I have very happy memories of watching the Saturday night black-and-white movies on the local PBS station via my rabbit ears. At one point, I was friends with a single mom and our weekly treat was takeout sandwiches and watching Survivor, which was new and buzzy at that time. I was famous for my excellent baked goods. My Bible was the Tightwad Gazette, even though my lifestyle was far from a farmhouse in Maine with four children. I furnished my apartment from Goodwill and a kind of "estate-sale-warehouse" that was like a giant ongoing yardsale and built my wardrobe on consignment stores and hand-me-downs with some birthday gifts as well.
10 years and three jobs later, I still live in a small apartment but now it has a washer/dryer and dishwasher. I have a smartphone and high-speed internet and would give up a lot of other amenities before those. I have cable, but only the 13 basic channels. My eating style is now produce and protein with carbs as a treat and I eat a LOT less processed food. Take-out sandwiches are still a treat (especially since I have cut back on the carbs) and I miss those tiny indy sandwich shops in the Mid-Atlantic. Still adore the library. Still love black and white movies, but I tend to watch more TV on DVD--there was nothing like Mad Men and Downton Abbey 10 years ago. After a hiatus of a few years when I had a lot of friends with gluten restrictions, I am back to baking and love it. I haven't read the Tightwad Gazette in years, but this post is making me want to pull it out! I still remember and use some of her "big picture" concepts like Cost-Per-Wow (is the increased pleasure, quality, etc worth the price.) Of course the big change is the Internet. I shop online a lot to save on gas. One of my favorite entertainments is free "escape-the-room" games online. I read a lot of blogs but I try to read things that are thoughtful and informative rather than internet "junk food."
How about you? How have your frugal habits changed over time?
Being the ripe age of 51, I have been through a few stages. First broke. Second broke but really probably not broke just no idea on how to budget. Third, the 30s had to have it all, no budget,but no real debt we always kept it in check and had investments. Forth, budget to the max as we were not going to have an income, reducing, homemade detergent, budget budget. 5th ,lossened up on that as income was a better choice. Now we have entered a stage where we no longer have wants or needs to buy. We are just careful and not wasteful.
Mighty Frugal
4-5-12, 1:04pm
I began reading this in 2000 or 2001. I was a young single woman living in a condo I owned. I had a secure job, worked 60 plus hours a week and bought whatever I wanted. I had a tiny bit of credit card debt ($5k) and not much equity in my condo. I thought I would have a mortgage for life and debt for life. Life was easy though, plenty of money coming in and no 'dependents' and no fear about future.
I hated cooking and ate a can of peaches in light syrup for dinners. Ate blueberries and bananas or a frozen dinner for lunches I was super skinny!
This site turned me on to Tightwad Gazette and YMOYL and knocking down your debt.
And now, I am a little older, a little bigger, 2 kids and a dh. Because of this site my dh and I worked hard to pay off all of our debt early on and now live debt free. Still have same job but not so secure now (dh will lose his in July) and no more bonuses either!
We have much more money now but I feel poorer-does that make sense? I wish I could drop 10 lbs too...aside from that I love where my lif took me and could not be happier!
Like CTG492, I'm getting to the point of not needing or wanting to buy much (other than groceries, replacing wornout clothes and broken items). The first five or six years, I was just trying to acquire basics, and then upgrading those in areas where quality made a difference (a good mattress, a high-quality stand mixer instead of the cheap chain-store hand mixer, good knives, a faster and more up-to-date computer). I did recycle Version 1.0 back to Goodwill etc where I had originally gotten it, so there wasn't a lot of waste generated. I also acquired a few family things through life transitions. This forum was really helpful in differentiating the areas where spending more would make a difference.
Intereseting to think about. I grew up in a frugal family and really have been pretty frugal in my 59 years. Always hung clothes on the line for instance. Now, while I buy a lot less than I did for many years and have less money, I find some things aren't worth it for me to be real frugal about. I used to have a big garden(when I was married, never had kids) canned, froze etc most of our food after coming home from working a physically demanding job. Now I buy pretty much everthing. About the only thing I grow is a couple of tomato plants. I pay for more things to be done too like I will probably hire someone to replace some deck boards that previously I would have just done myself. I buy fewer things, but I usually try to buy exactly what I really want not the make do I did before.
When I came upon the SLN forums, I was trying to decide if I could retire from a bad case of stress and burnout. I got the ideas to explore here and made the move. I have gone through several bouts of anxiety as the prices of oil fluctuated and DH had serious health challenges. Finally, I am at peace financially and otherwise. I can manage whatever and ask for help if needed. DH is much more onside with my choices which makes life much more peaceful.
Oh, wow! I love this thread! Such super-excellent posts thus far, too!
Having kids, is what I like to think of as being one of the major contributing factors, if not the major factor, in relation to helping create and nourish the strong frugal side in me, and in a lot of ways, I had no choice. I look at much of what I did (in the frugal sense... as a mom) as being a necessity.
Mom (my mom) was Mrs. Frugal/Mrs. Thrifty, when us kids were growing up, and a lot of it rubbed off on me. When she was busy, which was all the time, she'd hand-off the laundry-basket to me and away I'd go, disappearing out back to hang the fresh washing on the line! I was still in my single digits, and even though there were times I hated hanging laundry, it grew on me.
Same goes for canning. I helped mom, every year, can garden fresh goods. To this day I love the smell of pickling salt! Takes me back! And seldom did I miss a night helping mom wash and dry the supper dishes! The great talks we had...
Additionally, growing up around younger siblings also helped prepare me for the realities of motherhood at an early age. I owned a spot (crib-side) when baby brother was in diapers! Watching mom work her magic related to all things baby-care. Mom also babysat neighbourhood children when called upon, and if I was around, I was right there helping her.
Then my turn came to start babysitting, and my first babysitting job was across the way. I was a Mother's Helper (more than anything) at the start, but the mom wasted no time in handing the reins over to me within weeks of me starting! I was all of eleven, but as excited as heck to be in charge! I did evening babysitting on school nights/weekends, daytime babysitting when school was out (summer months). And of course, being at the height of the mid-70's, the mom used real diapers... cloth diapers, with pins and rubber pants! A frugal-trained babysitter I was!
Once word spread around the neighbourhood that I was babysitting for Mrs. W, our phone started-a-ringin'! Suddenly, my babysitting jobs grew from one, to a few, to lots! Nary a weekend passed where I didn't take on a job babysitting for someone...
Take all of this pre-wife/pre-motherhood experience related to frugality, and you've got a frugal-zealot (already semi-established), ready to rubber-stamp her way in life! I was miles ahead of my day/years Re: frugality, and as the story goes, I adopted nearly everything I came across and was exposed to, from a ripe early age, comfortably preparing me for a life destined to simplicity/frugality!
DH and I married in 1989, and in 1992, had our first baby. Before baby #1 was born, I was canning, clothesline drying, sewing, and just about everything else under the sun related to frugal living! Including babysitting my oldest sisters kids and neighbours trio, and both neighbour, and sister, used cloth diapers.
So, as to be expected, and, as tradition goes, DD, was promptly pinned-up in four-corner pants, the minute we arrived home, as was every subsequent baby there after in our house... Twenty years has passed since the birth of L, and the only thing that's changed related to my frugal and simple ways, is that I've learned even more from being here! Thank you everyone!!!
I'm 45 now. I feel that I'm a lot less worried about my frugality, and in some ways I'm less frugal, perhaps, but I'm in much greater control of my budget. Since my wife and I got married in 1996, we've paid off around $26,000 in student loans, bought a house, raised two kids to the ages of 10 and 12 with me as the at-home-dad, on one income of around $45,000. We lived without a car for the past eight years, but recently, with my daughter heading off to a charter school for middle and high school, we decided that we had to cave in and buy a car, so we paid cash for 2003 Subaru Outback. After not driving for so long, I was shocked by the rapidity with which the fuel gauge goes from full down to empty, so we're buying a vespa as a back-up vehicle. I'll use that for things we don't need a car for but which can't be done by bike, (like getting my daughter from her Girls on the Run running which ends at 4:15 to her swim team practice across town that starts at 4:30). We have about $12,000 in savings now, and owe about $49,000 on our house, (thanks in part to some inheritance). With my working part time now that the children don't need me quite as much, we're not feeling as pinched financially and should have the house paid off in about three years, God willing, Inshallah, and all that.
We've always been OK about staying out of debt, but our frugality has paid off in that we feel we have a little bit of breathing room now. That's the main difference.
i've been on the boards less than a year, but here's my story.
as a kid, i had a streak for austerity. my mother always found it odd that she would give me a clothing budget, and I'd only spend half. My sister would find a way to spend my other half, even though I always encouraged my mother to save it. I was the master of the capsule wardrobe around age 12.
i kept my room clean and tidy, and was a pretty hard-core minimalist. around that same age (12), i'd basically reduced my toys and books into one book shelf (tall) in my room, and i had this weird goal of each shelf being half-empty, my closet having only one dress, and my dresser drawers being mostly empty (i had two antique dressers. one was completely empty, the other was half-empty).
when given pocket money, I always brought home half or more.
when i went to university, i developed more frugal skills and started to think about being earth friendly. i didn't gain a ton of skills, but I did gain some, and found that living in small quarters was really great for me. I went even MORE minimal -- by taking only ONE large box to school with me each year. My roommates always found me to be *very* strange. I loved living in the dorm and having really only what I needed around. Austerity is awesome.
when i went to law school, my husband and I lived within our means. We are debt adverse, and so we were strict about it. I wish i'd ditched law school and would have less debt today, but still. It is what it is.
After I graduated, i handed over finances to DH. We came up with a loose plan -- and we succeeded quite well. I was always sketchy about the numbers because doing the actual banking was upsetting to me. Hard-core anxiety producing. DH didn't like it much either, but he did a great job.
when we decided to move to NZ, i learned how to manage my anxiety. running our business is great, and i'm able to go into our account daily to reconcile things and have conversations with our accountant about tax forms. We have not been able to pay back my debt as quickly as I would like. . . but our business is growing so well that I cannot complain at all!
our lifestyle here is even more frugal than it was in the US and we have a very strict, tight budget. I do budget in regular travel -- because it is important for us. I suppose we could have another austerity in that, but to be honest, when family comes we want to be able to travel with them and they want to travel. . . so there it is.
that being said, when family decides that they don't want to come (which i think will be approaching soon), we have an option for a 'free' holiday. there are two festivals around christmas that we can attend as an aspect of our business. so, it would be both a holiday and an opportunity for our business (1/2 of the participants in these festivals live in wellington, so it would be great for us!). These two festivals have workshops in all kinds of healing modalities and yoga (so we'd be offering that), and then they also have music, a circus opportunity for children, art opportunities for everoyne, and it's in the most beautiful location in NZ -- very laid back and 'chill' too. So, we are looking at that as an option.
Though to be honest, just going and visiting friends is super-nice. :) Free housing!
Anyhoot.
Since coming on these boards, I've come to serious terms and understanding with my law school debt (such an emotional mess that is!), and i've gathered up some tricks for various ways of approaching things. . . various ways of being frugal.
I don't think I'm making as much an effort to be frugal right now as I feel I have pretty much "enough" when it comes to material goods (in fact I'm on a road where I'm getting rid of things more). I've always been a saver rather than a spender and up until about 10 years ago wasn't making much extra money, I think being frugal is just part of my personality.
The focus of my savings is currently on a fantasy of retirement some day, or at least working less, so I continue to make conscious choices deciding if I really need something or just want it. It's OK if I just want something but I take the question to another level and question myself if I will actually use it and not just want it. I also tend to buy the best quality I can afford, rather than just what is the lowest price.
HumboldtGurl
4-6-12, 11:13am
How about you? How have your frugal habits changed over time?
Since I joined SL around 2000, I've catapulted myself into a life with more meaning and happiness thanks to the habits DH and I have instilled in ourselves.
When I first came around here, we were about, oh, a half-million in debt counting our business, home and student loans. We worked ridiculously long days to run our business, lived high on the hog by eating out a lot and spending bucks on parties, good booze and gourmet food. Ohhhh, what a life! I wanted to live simply but that usually involved buying things out of a Real Goods catalog and spending a lot of money on my garden. Dumb! Little did we know that these pleasures were keeping us enslaved and unable to dig ourselves out of our debt hole!
If it wasn't for our dog getting diagnosed with cancer in 2006, which showed us what really matters in life, I'm not sure we would've woken up. We got sold/rid of everything we owned to pay off our debts and became more frugal than ever.
Over a decade later, we are debt free, own one tiny home that's paid for and spend most of the year roaming around in our RV while living and working on the road. Money is tight and nearly everything we own is second-hand, we rarely eat out anymore and live on less than half of what we used to earn . . . but we're happier than ever because now we know what really makes us happy, and it's not found in a catalog or on a four star restaurant menu.
Wooo hoo!
It's just part of our lifestyle now. For example I went thrift shopping yesterday and brought water with me. When I started to get hungry, I told myself that nothing would taste better than the delicious leftovers I had in the fridge. I'm happy with my frugality at the street level so to speak but I'm not really sure how that has impacted our big picture.
Keep the stories coming everyone! I overlooked mentioning the fact that I have been a member here since 2006! And, have probably learned more in the 6 plus years I've been here, than all the time leading up to that point! Really says something about the treasure-trove of experience and hands-on knowledge we have here!
I've always been fascinated with the efficient use of resources. Even as a kid, I was fascinated by it. I grew up in an area of Minneapolis that has a lot of artists and immigrants, both groups of people who are exceedingly good at making fabulousness out of nothing, and my mom was a preschool teacher, another group of people who are good at making a lot from a little. I grew up in a community of people who crafted themselves a pretty awesome and amazing life by making conscious choices and living their lives intentionally.
As long as I can remember I've been interested in doing just that. When I was a kid and learned to cook, for example, my dad and I were talking about all of the ethnic foods I loved. He told me that a lot of the best foods were just peasant foods, stuff people had made with whatever they happened to have available, but with a little creativity and some skill they had made what they had into something delicious. So I learned to cook and got to be pretty good at doing exactly that.
I made a bit of a false start in my adult life after I panicked and gave up a business I started in my late teens to go back to college and pursue a career that was a bad fit for me and a relationship that was a bad fit for me.
By the time I was 23 I was done with the career and living in a semi-communal artist's warehouse. In quick succession, from ages 23-25, I gave up my career, moved to California, broke up with the exBF, met and married my husband and had a baby.
We moved back to Minnesota 2 years later and my frugality has moved from the realm of wandering, unattached young person to a more domestic kind of frugality. I do think Zach and I have managed to preserve the kind of free-spirited, creative, spontaneity of our younger days and translated it nicely into our family life.
It's funny, in some ways we have such a traditional kind of life. Our life doesn't look that different in a lot of ways from our grandparents, with the 5 kids, the homecooked dinners around the family table, kids running free-range over the neighborhood with instructions to come in when the street lights come on, card nights with the neighbors, Sunday morning Mass and Wednesday evening CCD, little girls in first communion dresses, SAHM and blue-collar dad, Grandpa living upstairs and happy babies playing under a clothes-line. In other ways it's dramatically different with the homeschooling, girls doing carpentry and robotics projects, lots of travel, ethnic foods, unorthodox expectations, a spirit of adventure and exposure to people of other cultures. It's kind of the best of both worlds.
To add. Another thing I love about frugality, is all the variables (related to each frugal practice) one can add to, after they establish each frugal practice. Seems there's so many additions, that can be introduced and incorporated to make a typical frugal practice even better and more frugal! It really is endless once you start.
My frugality stemmed from an, umm, incident with the Internal Revenue Service (not cheating, just guessing wrong) that made my then-wife and I realize that the free-spending days (and the days of doing our taxes ourselves) were over. Cheap lesson, I guess, as it got us thinking about just what we were spending money on, and why.
To me, frugality isn't just being "cheap". It's about spending money on what's important to you and balancing out (or making do) on the rest. I really enjoy listening to music, so I have a very nice-sounding stereo, but the few parts of it I didn't get scouting through thrift stores were bought used. I'm no clothes horse; my haberdasher for years has been Goodwill, but I suspect most people don't know it because I stick to classic styles and colors and have discovered that people donate even stuff with the tags still on (!). I don't do a lot of the maintenance on my car -- partially because the time and knowlege were not easy to come by, but partially because I don't want to be changing the oil by lying on a cold garage floor in January.
And frugality is about not buying what you don't need. After reviewing years of "gotta-have-it"s that morphed into "I-still-have-that?"s, I've curtailed the acquisition bug. I dropped the Sunday paper, because I prefer to read it on-line, and noticed I shopped less frequently because I wasn't seeing all those circulars screaming "buy something from me!" We try to spend extra money where it counts -- more efficient appliances may cost more up front, but up-front cost is such a small portion of the money they take from you during their lives. Buying used is great -- though in the current economy, I find people aren't buying so much new stuff that what they cast off has lots of value left.
It's a state of mind, really. Fortunately, that state of mind can be acquired if you want it to be.
flowerseverywhere
4-7-12, 11:13pm
our story is a little different. DH and I married young and never cared much what other people thought about us. We were pretty frugal but enjoyed traveling with our kids, didn't mind some credit card debt etc. Not really a high life but living slightly below our means.
One day DH fell on the ice and was badly injured, and ended up with several surgeries to repair damage. During his recovery he was diagnosed with cancer. All of a sudden everything was turned upside down.
fast forward to now and DH is doing well, with some physical limitations. We eliminated all debt, got our kids through college with minimal loans and helped with their weddings. It is amazing how you can manage your money when you have to. We left our traditional jobs at the first opportunity and live life to the fullest. We buy nothing we don't have the cash up front for.
Every day we enjoy the sights, smells, sounds, touch and sensations that surround us in the world. We are almost 60 and last year I bicycled over 1,000 miles. We love to watch birds, hike, quilt, do woodwork, have huge gardens full of flowers and vegetables, and we devour library books. I play a mean scrabble game and am addicted to crosswords. We have wonderful friends and a wonderful life not connected to money. Our kids are strong, independent and caring.
We learned along the way the most important things in life are not connected to spending money, once you have shelter, protection from the extreme heat or cold, adequate clothing, water and food. All of your material things can be gone in an instant (just ask survivors of natural disasters) but your connections and skills will remain.
It's so true about that acquisition bug!
Honestly, at a certain point in my life (between 22 and 27) I was struggling with so much cognitive dissonance that getting gifts or buying things would make me physically ill. As in actually, honest to god, physically ill. It was stress-induced, of course. But still, crazy.
I finally was able to say "no" to my parents. They don't often pay attention -- and I really, really have to PUSH.
While they were here, they wanted to buy me new dishes. I have an arrangement with a friend (a potter) that she'll make dishes for me in exchange for yoga/thai massage. We'll start when she gets back from Israel in July. I kept saying "I have this arrangement with my friend." and "I don't want new dishes."
I have always wanted hand-thrown dishes made by an artist. I just LOVE them. And my friend is so awesome to want to trade for them. I just have to be patient. And my parents were like "well, then you'll have TWO sets." And I'm like "why!? WHY!?" and i kept saying "i really need some shelves. I really need money for some shelves. But it was like talking to a wall. They wanted to "help me out" but not the help that I wanted.
And then mom said she wanted to get me some linens for DS's bed. Great. I priced it out and told her the cost, and then she was like "no, that's more than I wanted to spend" And then subsequently went to my sister's house for the weekend and spend 4x that amount of linens and clothes for my sister. LOL
This is partly why I have such a weird relationship with stuff and money.
And, I do a lot of going without. I had a lot of stuff, but not what I wanted/needed a lot of the time, so. . . I'm used to making do.
fidgiegirl
4-7-12, 11:55pm
Love the stories, all.
As a teen, I thought you had to spend all the money that came your way. My parents, who are wonderful people but are used to living on the edge financially (and in the hole), never discussed savings with us. I mean, I think I had a credit union account, but that was really used just to cash checks, not to make savings. And so if I had it, I spent it. I could accomplish a short-term money goal - for example, I went to Mexico my senior year with Girl Scouts, and I was able to save up my spending money from my part-time job for that. I contributed most of the money for my band trips and that kind of thing. I didn't like asking for money from my parents, but I spent all of my own.
In college, I worked just enough to cover living expenses, and took loans for the rest. So I had this kind of innate sensibility toward frugality, like that it would be silly to take out loans for my living expenses (not saying some people don't have to do that and that's each person's business, but it didn't make sense for me . . . ), or that I knew not to go get the $40 nail jobs that my friends were getting because I only made, ahem, like $100 a month at my part-time job. So that was good. But the loans I just viewed as a necessary evil. I had no idea, really, that anyone worked and saved to pay any part or all of their tuition as they went along. I was clueless about that part.
I had a few carefree years after college, I lived in Mexico for two of them and made a pittance but had room and board so I made it work. Then I came home and lived with my parents for a year and my 13 year old brother, who has turned out very nicely but was acting like the spawn of Satan during that particular year. Well, at a minimum, he was grumpy.
I finally needed out. I had made some hard efforts to get in somewhere doing interpreting, but couldn't land a gig, so I grabbed a teaching job. I am a foreign language teacher, and we are very in demand, I must say :) So that worked out well.
Not being so sure about the happiness factor around teaching (turned out I liked it :) ) and suddenly really really really wanting to buy a house, I had my come-to-Jesus. I couldn't buy a house. I didn't make nearly enough money, and I had . . . um . . . how much debt? I had to add it up. I'd been pretty responsible with the CC's, but still had a balance. And, killer . . . I had just bought a car with a $17,000 loan. Oops. (I still have it, though, seven years later . . . ) So the total, with my student loans, was about $35,000. And I was making a first-year teacher's salary.
So! I started reading books like Your Money or Your Life and The Simple Living Guide. I was a YMOYL devotee, hardcore, for about two years exclusively, and that's when I found the boards and when the frugality really ramped up and when I spent a lot of time "practicing" measures of frugality that are now automatic. Then I added Dave Ramsey into the mix. Eventually, DH and I paid off my debt in late 2009. We have a bit now related to the house purchase, and are cooking up plans to eradicate it.
We got kind of relaxed after we paid off the debt, though. We had a big cushion, and because we are kind of naturally frugal (we weren't spending a lot, but weren't making a significant effort, either) it just kept growing. Now we've depleted it with the house purchase and renovation, so we're going to tighten things down again.
I believe we need to get back to tracking, a la YMOYL. In fact, I was thinking of starting a support group :)
Thank you for starting this thread!!! Sorry so long :)
flowerseverywhere
4-8-12, 6:32am
I believe we need to get back to tracking, a la YMOYL. In fact, I was thinking of starting a support group :)
of all the things we have done, tracking our money has been the #1 thing that has gotten us out of debt and kept us there as it keeps us mindful of every penny. It is easier than ever today with online banking etc. I heartily encourage you to do so.
That is awesome!
We did our deep cleaning today. Decluttering is *awesome*. We are going to tackle the closet tomorrow, but everything else in hte house is *done* and that feels great. :) ahhhh, minimalism.
Then, DH and I decided to talk about our finances. His anxiety over the last few days was palpable.
As we talked, the truth is that he wants to work more -- he's waiting on a specific contract to come in, one that was expected in january, to have the second contract in that series coming now, and then a third in July. But, they hve been pushed back, and he's holding his schedule open for them, and it's freaking him out! In the mean time, he's doing a lot of small projects, but he was "counting on" that money -- emotionally speaking. He wanted to use it has his "foundation for supporting the family via an emergency fund." These three contracts would have provided us with a 6 month, home-expenses emergency fund, and so he was psyched about it. So, it's not like we aren't doing well, but he was just frustrated.
One thing that has happened since coming here is that we dive more deeply into our emotions around money, facing them directly, and then finding pro-active solutions.
We then looked at our budget. We found a few places where we can develop austerities:
1. We changed our fatso (netflix) program to one closer to our actual use. Monthly savings of $12.
2. A friend of ours offered us day-use of their parking space 1 day per week, costing us $5 for the day. Monthly savings of $48.
3. We discovered a new bulk store.
Plus side: our staples are cheaper and it's zero waste for us (we can take our jars to fill them with nuts, seeds, dried fruit, spices, loose tea (including our favorite brands and mixes), oils, vinegar, and the basic organic dish soap we use. According to our price book, we saved about $40 this week buying at the bulk shop.
Draw back: time and gas -- we have to drive to get there (it's about 30-40 minutes away, but we can also get water out of the natural spring for free there, which is great as I'm transitioning us off fluoride and the water here is treated). I'm not sure how much gas it is, honestly.
So, lets say we split the difference? Possibly $40 in monthly savings.
4. we got started on our fall/winter menu planning.
I know this seems non-budgety, but it is. In the winter, food prices for "normal" stuff like tomatoes usually sky-rocket. Also, they are often imported from Australia. We looked at our menu last year, as well as our food purchases, and had marked that which was local/seasonal. From there, we found some recipes.
We want to eat local and seasonal, and so we were looking at the best prices and dug out some recipes. We found several great recipes that would use our home made chicken and beef broths, and use simple and inexpensive items like onions, sweet potatoes, squash, cabbages and kales. I'm also good with "hot salads" -- using the kales and cabbages as we head into winter -- and we did manage to make a fair bit of fermented salsa, which will keep us happy in the colder months and we have a hankering for that fresh, summer taste!
By digging out new recipes, we have started transitioning ourselves more comfortably. We still have ample summer produce available to us now, but we are able to plan ahead into May and June so that we can budget accordingly.
So far, we've managed to get our food budget down from $350/wk to $312 (the last week), and this week, with our bulk items (replacing some spices which we do every third month as they don't have a shelf life much longer) we paid $320 this week. So we saved on our normal bulk items, and even on the cost of spices, but because we had to refill the spices, we spent more this week. Still, we are down $30-$38/wk, and that's doing well.
5. We have slashed our dining-out budget back down to $40/mo. This is what we were spending before, and I think that we can do so again now.
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Then we had a talk about our financial needs. I need a new pair of shoes plus some new shirts. DH also needs new shirts and some new socks. Looking at American Apparel -- their organic line isn't much more expensive than non (i think it's a $2-3 difference), and it looks like DH and I can get our needs met through them for $50. We have gift cards, so we're going to get started on that.
We also need rain gear, so my parents said they would provide it for us. That saves us about $100 each.
Finally, I need to get my tooth fixed. Luckily, I have two new massage clients, and that income has been set aside for my normal check up plus the filling repair (non-emergency, but a $200 job). I'll have all the money that I need for it by Tuesday afternoon. So that was ear-marked.
My shoes are the biggest expense, but they are on special right now and we have a coupon -- so $120 shoes for $35 isn't a bad go. :) They should last a year, possibly a bit more. :)
I can't remember a time not being frugal. I grew up with parents who grew up during the depression and learned the difference between needs and wants. I learned how to set priorities, how to save for an emergency and to value what lasts for eternity over what lasts for a moment. I rarely (but do sometimes) covet what other have that I don't have, I am happy for them and happy for me without it. Frugality so ingrained in me that I'm not sure I could operate otherwise.
Keep the stories coming everybody! Really enjoying them!!!
I have found that not watching movies, not watching as much television -- since we moved here -- has been really satisfying. I really don't feel like I'm missing out at all.
I used to love movies. I could always take/leave TV and preferred PBS anyway. I like documentaries and stuff. But really, I'm finding that I do quite well without these things.
I don't think I could live without my internet forums, though! LOL
Ah, and we cut our internet caps back -- both at work and at home -- which saves us $20 per month in each place. We discovered that we weren't using enough data per month for the last 9 months (and we use it in a way that I consider pretty "excessive"), and so we got to drop back a plan, and did that online so that it goes through on the next billing cycle (which starts in 3 days).
I was also able to cut our cell phone back from $42/mo (which has 500 texts and X basic service) down to $29/mo which has only 100 texts per month. My average number of texts per month is less than 20. So, we are good to go with that one. That maintains our service, and we do need it as it is our only phone, and if one of us is at the office, the other has the phone, and we can contact each other if need be. It's happened a few times. Maybe not $29/mo worth though. I wonder if we can go on a pre-paid minutes plan. I"ll have to look into that (probably when the contract ends).
So, the total savings thus far are:
$12 saved on fatso
$48 saved from parking
$175 (ish) on food (variable)
$35 from dining out (variable)
$20 from internet
$13 from cell phone
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$303 freed up.
Now we just need to see how it goes this month -- see where things really worked and where they didn't. My "concerns" are around the food. The prices can fluctuate wildly, and we are transitioning into fall so cracking out different recipes. There may be some failures. That's food waste. That's increased cost!
If we free up $300 in our household expenses, that would be *fabulous*.
Bump!
Resurrecting, because it's such a great thread!
Would love to hear from a few of our newcomers Re:.
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