When It Comes to Frugal– You Do You!

Pin

Being frugal is not the same as being cheap. For me being frugal means being intentional rather than wasteful with your resources. It’s a mindset that isn’t just about money, though there are often financial implications.

Everyone’s frugal looks different.

Have you ever looked at the way someone else is being frugal and thought, “I would/could never do that!”

I know I have!

I’ll even share a few examples if you promise not to get offended if this is your style of frugality.

For example, the idea of limiting toilet flushing to once a day is not my style of frugality. I can handle using a vault toilet at a camp site or national park, but I’m not interested in having that sort of environment in my home. The flush of a modern toilet uses a maximum of 1.6 gallons of water. If our family of 8 flushes the toilet around 40 times a day (total guess, I’ve never monitored such activity), that uses up to 64 gallons of water. At 0.4 cents per gallon of water, our flushing habit only costs $0.26 per day. Even if we could save $90 a year by only flushing once a day, I am more than happy to pay more to have cleaner smelling bathrooms.

But if that’s your style, then you do you! Just be sure you’re doing something!

Here’s another example of extreme frugality that’s not my cup of tea.

Many people choose not to own a car in order to save money on the costs and responsibilities of car ownership. I think it’s really interesting to see how they get creative with bike riding and taking public transportation to get to where they need to go, but it just doesn’t fit my lifestyle. I enjoy living in a place where there isn’t public transportation and there isn’t anything within walking or biking distance. Does owning a car cost more? Absolutely! Between fuel, maintenance, registration fees, and auto insurance, we’ve spent almost $17,000 on cars in the last twelve months, and that’s not including the price of actually purchasing any car. But that’s a price I’m willing to pay to have the life I want.

If I am surprised at some people’s ideas of frugality, I’m sure plenty of people have cringed at some of the ways that I am frugal.

With my youngest four kids I used cloth diapers (mostly that I got free or cheap). I never imagined myself doing that! I made the switch when we decided to laser focus on paying off our student loan debt in 2013. That saved around $1500 of disposable diapers for each kid, plus a lot of landfill space.

We often wash out freezer bags and reuse them, but never if they had meat in them. One gallon freezer bags cost about $0.20 each, so this has minimal budget impact, but it’s one of many frugal habits we’ve had for a long time.

We almost never eat out. I love the idea of not having to cook, but I just can’t justify the price for a family of 8. Even when we were a family of two it seemed like a lot relative to our income. With all 8 of us, even the cheapest meal would total at least $60. A sit-down restaurant at $20 a plate would cost us over $190! That’s for a single meal when our food budget last month was under $500!

We don’t go to see movies in the theater. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve watched a movie in a theater in twenty years of marriage. I’m just not a movie person, so if I’m going to watch something, I’d rather watch it at home for free. And while we’ve used Netflix or Disney+ in the past, we currently have no streaming subscriptions. We don’t keep up with any series or see the latest movies when they are released.

When our whole family flew to Washington DC, we brought most of our food with us since checked bags were free back then. We weren’t renting a car, just taking public transportation, so we didn’t want to have to worry about getting to the grocery store or spending any time shopping. It was honestly wonderful (read about that trip here), but it was a little too crazy feeling for most people.

That’s fine! It doesn’t offend me.

What works well for ME doesn’t have to work for YOU.

Sometimes what you’re willing to do while you’re working on a big goal like paying off debt, is different that what you’re willing to do in another chapter of your life.

When we were paying off debt, I used to stretch ground beef by adding in veggies. I haven’t done that in over a decade!

If you have a parent or grandparent who lived through the depression, then you’ll know what I mean when I say “Grandma Tupperware.” I’m talking about washing out every plastic cool whip or sour cream container to reuse for leftovers. When we had just started our big debt repayment, my mother-in-law gifted me a set of these, which eliminated my need for Grandma Tupperware. For me, having clear leftover containers (I have these glass ones to easily reheat food and my original favorites for being spill and break-proof in a backpack) is actually more frugal because I can easily see what’s inside and not forget about food until it’s wasted. No more Grandma Tupperware for me.

You do you!

While you may be content to cut the end off of every tube of toothpaste to get another week’s worth of toothpaste out, another person wouldn’t think of doing that. They might focus their energy on unplugging every appliance when it’s not being used, which you would never do.

Maybe your friend cuts her family’s hair, a responsibility which, to you, sounds like an extreme way to save money. You, on the other hand, bring your lunch to work everyday to save money, which your friend won’t even consider because she loves eating out at work.

Frugal for you might look like buying new, high quality clothes and taking good care of them, getting stains out, and mending as needed. For someone else, frugal looks like never buying new clothes, but shopping second-hand clothing instead.

We have frugality in common, but we all go about it in a different way. That’s great! There are so many so many options for being frugal. I love story time with Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies, both to share my experiences and read yours in the comments. We are all unique people with unique priorities. We have access to different resources and draw on varied talents and skills. There are lots of reasons why we each choose to live our frugal life differently.

You do you!

If you want an organized way to be more frugal, I have a 28-day Frugal Fresh Start Challenge series that will walk you through setting up a budget and teach you lots of practical ways you can be more frugal. You can adapt the challenge to your own family and situation. There are a couple of ways to access it. You can check out the YouTube playlist here, which has a video for each of the 28 days. If you want to receive an email reminder with a link to each day’s challenge, you can sign up for the challenge here. If you want to just dive in with day 1, you can get that here, then just use the navigation at the bottom of each post.

If you stick to the challenge each day, you’ll be well on your way to reaching your financial goals!

If you don’t love the idea of frugality, then I have a three part solution that will help you save money and reach your goals without “being frugal.” You can learn about that in the video below!

How about you!

I really want to hear from you on this one!

• What are some frugal strategies that you are not willing to embrace or that sound crazy to you?
• What frugal things do you do that other people might think are strange?