Tag Archives: Frugality

What made you decide to live frugally?

Every frugal family has a unique reason for choosing this lifestyle. For some people, it’s a job loss. For others, it’s the birth of a child or the desire to be a stay-at-home parent. For us, it was a gradual change, but I do still remember the day I made the conscious decision to live frugally.

When we arrived in North Carolina before my husband began graduate school, we had quite a bit of money in the bank (about $10,000 to be exact). We’d saved for a year knowing we would need a little padding until I could find a job.

In the beginning, I wouldn’t say we were frugal. We spent too much on groceries. We bought a lot of new things for our apartment. We adopted a puppy (which I absolutely don’t regret). Even though we were careful, we weren’t what I would call frugal yet.

We’d been living here for two months, and I had no leads for jobs despite sending a ton of resumes. I was beginning to worry that we were going through our savings too quickly. It’s scary to look at the bank account and see a lot of money going out with nothing coming back in.

Then I finally got a call for a job interview. I was thrilled. I even went out and bought new clothes for the interview. They called me in for a second interview. Then a third and a fourth. I met everyone in their small office. I thought I had the job in the bag. Our spending had gradually increased. I was so sure I’d be working full time soon.

They invited me back to meet with the president of the company for the second time. I was positive this was the hiring interview. It was such a relief.

The day before the meeting, they canceled. For some reason that I’ll never understand, they decided not to hire me at the last minute.

Devastated does not describe how I felt. I was completely crushed. After two months of sending resumes and six weeks of interviewing with this company, I thought this had been my shot. I thought this was the perfect opportunity. But it didn’t work out.

I was absolutely depressed for days. Then I started fretting about money. Our savings was running out. I had been counting on this job for six weeks, so we’d spent more than we should have leading up to the rejection.

I realized I would have to take a part-time job outside of my field until I could find something else. I also realized we were going to have to live on a lot less money than we’d hoped. Even with freelance writing jobs, it just wasn’t enough to cover the gaps.

If I couldn’t do anything to increase our income, we’d need to decrease our spending. At the very least, we’d be able to get by without increasing our debt or worrying about paying our bills.

Frugality empowered me to pick myself up, dust myself off, and get on with my life. I realized that I had more control over our financial destiny than I thought. For so long I thought the only answer for us to improve our financial situation was to make more money. When I realized that wasn’t the case, a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders.

We made under $20,000 that year. And yet we were still able to plan our wedding, pay off a chunk of credit card debt, and keep our heads above water. We didn’t start saving again until we paid off our credit card debt and I was hired full time, but I’m still proud of the progress we made on such a small income.

Even though our income has finally increased some, the lessons I learned in that year will stay with me forever.

What made you decide to live frugally?

Easy ways to cut your grocery spending

grocery-shoppingIt was less than a year ago that I was frustrated with our $85-$100 a week grocery spending. I didn’t feel like we were being extravagant, and yet we couldn’t seem to cut our spending. Looking back, I realize that we were making a lot of mistakes. By making a few simple changes, we’ve cut our spending by $30-$40 a week without feeling deprived. That’s a savings of over $100 a month!

These tips may not apply to you if you’re already living frugally. But if you’re just getting started or you’re struggling to cut high grocery costs, this may be a good place to start.

Plan your meals around the sales.

Every week, we look at the grocery ads for both of the stores in our area. You can do this online at MyGroceryDeals.com. After looking at all of the sales, we plan meals based on what’s on special that week, or we plan to stock up on staples that are on sale to save money in later weeks. Make a list, and stick to it! Impulse purchases are almost always unnecessary.

Stockpile when staple items are on sale.

We cook a lot of chicken-based meals. One of the first things I realized when we started cutting grocery spending is that buying just enough chicken for the week was eating up our budget. If we needed three chicken breasts for the week, we’d pay as much as $4 a pound just to buy what we needed. Now that I stockpile, I’ve realized that chicken breasts go on sale for $1.99 a pound once a month. When that happens, we stock up with 12 or 15 chicken breasts, freeze them in serving sizes, and use it throughout the month. You can do this with other meats as well as non-perishable or freezable staples.

Avoid snacks and other extras.

When I took a good look at our grocery spending last year, I realized that a lot of what we were buying wasn’t for meals. It was extra stuff that may have been on sale or just looked good that we were throwing into the cart. Cutting out these extra purchases will cut your spending and make it easier to avoid snacking at home. In the beginning we cut out everything that wasn’t part of a meal just to get used to the concept of buying only for meals. Now we’ve been able to work healthy snacks back into our grocery trips by shopping the sales and limiting ourselves.

Drink water or iced tea instead of soda.

Seriously. I still struggle with this one because I enjoy drinking a diet soda with dinner, but you can cut your grocery spending by $12-$20 a month just by cutting out soda and packaged beverages.

Clip coupons.

I’ll be honest. I’m terrible at clipping coupons, and this has not been part of my grocery saving strategy. But if you find you have a knack for coupon clipping, you can save a ton by matching coupons with in-store deals. We typically don’t purchase packaged foods, so I’ve found that coupons aren’t very useful for us for groceries.

Add a “leftovers night” to your meal plan.

You can easily cut about $10 a week from your grocery cost by planning for six meals instead of seven. This is also a good way to clear out your refrigerator and avoid wasting leftover food.

Our $50-$60 a week grocery budget is considered pretty high for two people in the frugal world. Many frugal families of four are able to eat well for $30-$40 a week. But we consider groceries to be one of our few luxuries because we love to cook and eat.

What about you? How do you keep your grocery costs down?

Photo by B tal

Thoughts on our first cash-only weekend

We made it through our first cash-only weekend! It has been quite a challenge, but it’s actually been fun! Here are some highlights:

Successes

We didn’t use our debit cards once! The only money we spent was from the $90 we withdrew on Saturday.

We also didn’t go over budget! After buying groceries and seeing a matinee, we have $20 left. This is the exact amount we budgeted for household expenses. Because we didn’t need any household items this week, we’ll hang on to that $20 for a later week when we’ll inevitably need more than $20 for necessary household expenses.

The biggest victory is that I’m not dreading our bottom line. Most weekends, I cringe when I look at Mint the following week and see how much we spent. This week, I know exactly how much we spent, and I know we didn’t blow our budget. Yay!

Challenges

This afternoon, the weather was beautiful and I felt the urge to go out to lunch someplace with patio seating. Because we didn’t have cash for it in the budget, we didn’t go. It was tough, though.

Instead, we took a drive to the beach, walked the dog around a nearby lake, and got some work done. In the end, our choice was healthier for us physically and financially, so I’d say our cash-only budget is having positive effects beyond our bank accounts.

Setbacks

We technically didn’t follow our own rules. Because we were $9 under budget for groceries, we should have ended the weekend with $29 in pocket. Part of the deal was that we would hang on to extra cash if we went under budget for later weeks or something fun at the end of the summer. Instead of hanging on to it, we spent an extra $4 over our entertainment budget because the new Pixar movie “Up” wasn’t playing at the cheap theater. We also picked up a couple extra items at the grocery store for $3 total.

After a weekend of success (with our cash-only budget and with my diet), I was seriously craving ice cream. But I couldn’t bear to break the $20 bill that had survived the weekend. I had $1 in my pocket, plus we had change scattered around the house and in the car. We scrounged together $2.50 and headed to the grocery store to pick up some ice cream sandwiches.

While it was technically cheating, it was definitely the most fun we’ve had on a cash budget. Working hard to scrounge together the money for that ice cream made it that much sweeter, and knowing that we could only spend $2.50 limited our choices.

My unwillingness to part with that $20 bill already shows a change in how I’m viewing money, particulary cash. In the past, I would have viewed that as “extra money” already removed from our account. Now I view it as “household expenses” money that we’ll most likely need in a future week. I didn’t want to spend it, because I knew we would probably need it later to avoid using our debit cards.

If we had gone to the grocery store to pick up ice cream with our debit cards, we might have spent $4 on specialty ice cream instead of the store-brand ice cream sandwiches we chose. I hate to admit it, but when it’s only $4 coming from our bank account instead of breaking a whole $20 bill, I would have been much more likely to spend it. Those little purchases add up, though, which is the reason we’re trying this experiment.

Overall, I think our first weekend was a success! And so far we’re having fun. It’s certainly changing the way we view money. I’m looking forward to more challenges and successes for the next three months. Stay tuned!

Our “no spend summer” starts this weekend

Last week, I wrote about the steps we’re taking to make sure we can get through the summer on my income alone. Throughout the year, Tony is paid to teach undergraduate classes at his university. Now that it’s summer, he won’t be receiving a paycheck. We knew this was coming all year, so we saved enough to cover his income through the summer without using our emergency fund. But now we want to try to hang on to that money, too.

We’ve come up with a new plan to ensure that we don’t overspend and we’re able to save. It’s something we’ve never tried before, but we’re excited about the challenge. Beginning this weekend and continuing through the months of June, July, and August, we’ll not only be limiting our spending, but we’ll be living on a cash budget.

Here’s how it works:

I added up our total income for the summer without Tony’s paychecks. Then I divided that number by three months to determine our total monthly income. I added up all of our fixed expenses — rent, utilities, and other bills — and subtracted that total from our monthly income. After paying all of our fixed expenses, we’ll have $370 left each month. That means we can only spend $90 a week on groceries, entertainment, and other expenses. This is only a little less than what we would spend anyway, but lately we’ve been more and more complacent. I really want to make sure we’re not tempted to go over.

Each week before we head to the grocery store, we’ll withdrawal $90 in cash from our bank account. This will be our only spending money for the entire week. We’ll have to work extra hard to stay within our grocery budget, and if we go over, it’ll reduce the amount we have for entertainment and other expenses. I’m anticipating that we’ll spend $60 or less each week on groceries, $20 on household expenses, and $10 on entertainment.

Our idea for a cash budget for the summer was inspired by Small Notebook’s “no spend month.” It’s essentially the same concept, only we’re not limiting our spending quite as much as her family does so we can maintain it over three months instead of just one.

As an incentive to hang on to as much cash as we can, we’ve decided that whatever cash is left at the end of the summer will go to something fun. We’ll see how much is left before we go making any plans with it. :)

I initially decided to pause saving for the summer, but based on this budget, we’ll be able to save $250 a month (about half of what we normally save). At the end of the summer, we’ll be able to put the $2,000 we saved to supplement our summer income into our regular savings.

I’m a little nervous because I’ve struggled with cash spending in the past. But we’re really excited to take on this new challenge! I think it’ll be a good exercise to get us back on track. For the past few months, we’ve been a little too comfortable. Each month, we go a little more over budget on things like food and shopping. Hopefully this summer will get us back on track.

Our no spend summer begins this weekend. Any tips on how to make a cash budget work?

Surviving the summer without spending our savings

Tony’s summer vacation has officially started. He won’t be teaching or taking classes again until the end of August. Unfortunately, this means we’re losing a third of our income for the months of June and July.

We’ve been anticipating this temporary loss of income all year, so we prepared by putting aside most of the money we’ll need to cover Tony’s salary without using our emergency fund. But now I’m looking at that money, a pretty hefty chunk of change for us, and thinking about all the things we could do with it if we could save it.

Our original plan was for Tony to find a part-time job. Any extra money he made would go toward replenishing that savings. We’re not giving up on that plan yet, but it’s tough out there. He’s applied for about 20 part-time jobs so far with no returned phone calls. When he follows up, he’s told, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

It’s frustrating, but this is exactly why we saved the money. We knew it might be difficult for him to find a part-time job this summer, especially since we share a car and he’s limited to jobs that are accessible through walking or our city’s limited public transportation. So the money is there if we get into trouble, but even if he doesn’t find a job, we’re challenging ourselves to spend as little as possible for the next three months.

Here’s what we’re doing:

We’re temporarily halting savings.

It seems silly to take money out of savings only to put it right back in. We currently save about 60% of Tony’s income every month including retirement. For the months of June and July, we won’t be putting the full amount into savings. It seems counter-productive, but the point is to live only from our income without dipping into our savings. If we can make it through the summer without spending it, then we’ll be able to double what we would have normally saved in two months.

We’re participating in a no spend month.

I’m intrigued by the idea of a “No Spend Month,” from SmallNotebook.org. We’ve never tried a cash budget system, but we’re going to give it a shot one month this summer. We’ll probably wait until August when our finances are likely to be tightest.

We’re working from a three-month budget.

Every month I set a zero-based budget based on our expenses and income. This summer, since our monthly income is reduced, I’ll be setting a zero-based budget for three months instead of one.

Here’s why: Because I’m paid every other week, there are two months out of the year when I get three paychecks in a month instead of two. July is one of these months. Because I base our budget on our total monthly income instead of my yearly salary, this feels like “extra money.” When it’s split up over the course of three months, it helps cover some of the gaps of our lost income. So I added up all of the paychecks I’ll receive over the next three months, divided them by three, and set a monthly budget based on that.

We’re cutting our overall expenses — slightly.

After adding up our total income over the next three months and cutting out savings for two of those months, we come surprisingly close to our normal monthly income without moving money from savings. We’ll make a few adjustments to spending to cover the remaining gaps. I’m hoping that the no spend month at the end of the summer will help us increase our savings by even more.

Anything extra will go straight to savings.

If Tony does find a part-time job, it won’t change our plans. We want to save as much as possible this summer, and any extra income will go directly toward savings. We’re still hoping he’ll find something, because this will help us save so much more!

If all goes according to plan, we should be able to double the amount we would have put into savings this summer. Here’s hoping we can do it!

The bottom line: Frugality is about quality of life, not money

For me, frugality isn’t just about money. It’s not just about a bottom line. It’s not just about asking myself, how much did I earn this month? How much did I save? How much is in the bank?

Goals are so important to frugality, but they can also make frugality a little counter-productive. When you spend so much time setting goals and scrimping and saving, it’s easy to lose sight of the real goal — happiness and peace of mind.

Yes, frugality is about saving money. But the true bottom line is quality of life. The whole reason I want to get out of debt, save money, avoid living paycheck-to-paycheck is because I want to live better. I don’t want to worry about money. That’s why it’s so ironic when frugality occasionally leads me to do just that — worry about money.

When I worry about money now, it’s so unnecessary. It’s not because I can’t pay my bills or buy groceries. It’s because I forgot a coupon at home and paid an extra 30 cents for groceries, or a slight setback prevented us from hitting our savings goal for the month. Those are the times when I have to stand back, look at how far we’ve come, and remind myself to relax.

I continue to be mindful of my spending and save as much as I can, but I draw the line when it crosses over from mindfulness to worry. I’m frugal because I don’t want to worry about the money issues that really matter, like making ends meet or covering emergencies. If I still worry about money after all of this hard work, then what’s the point?

If you sweat the small stuff when it comes to frugality, take a step back and ask yourself why you’re clipping coupons, budgeting, saving. No matter what your overall goals, chances are your motives are the same — you want a better life. But fretting about every last penny isn’t the life I envision when I think about my best possible life.

When you’re kicking yourself for leaving a coupon at home, worrying about how long it’s going to take you reach your final goals, just take a step back, breathe, and remember the real bottom line.

Ask yourself: Is this improving my quality of life? Many of my frugal habits do: menu planning, budgeting, saving. At the end of the day, those things make me calmer and happier.

But the ones that don’t — worrying, depriving myself, sacrificing my comfort or happiness for a little bit of money —  shouldn’t be a part of my lifestyle.

How do we measure up to national averages?

One of the main concepts of frugality is that life isn’t a competition when it comes to finances. I try to avoid comparing myself to other people, because we inevitably fall short in terms of material possessions.

Just for fun, though, I took a look at some national averages to see where we fall on the spectrum. I was actually surprised to discover that in some ways we’re right on target. I had hoped we’d be considerably more frugal than the national average, but it turns out we’re pretty average.

Housing

I couldn’t find any hard and fast statistics newer than 2004. As of 2004, the average American spent 21% of their income on housing costs. But that was 5 years ago, and so much has changed since then. According to CNN Money, mortgage costs should equal no more than 28% of your income. Our rent is about 26% of our monthly income, so it looks like we’re pretty average in that respect.

Savings

This is my favorite category. :) As of February, the national personal savings rate reached 4.2%. We save a minimum of 21.5% of our after-tax income every month. Yay us!

Food

I’m sort of bummed about where we fall here. According to the USDA food plans, families of 2 living on a “thrifty” food plan spend $82.10 a week on food. Doesn’t sound too thrifty to me. We typically spend $60 a week at the grocery store, but our monthly food costs are closer to $400 total, or $100 a week.

We’ve become increasingly lazy about monitoring food costs, and those extra trips to the grocery store and occasional meals out really do add up. So we’re closer to the “low-cost” food plan, which is about $104.60 a week (again, that doesn’t really sound “low-cost” to me). We’ve always struggled with food spending, and this little comparison exercise has really opened my eyes. We need to crack down.

Debt

The average American owes $8,329 to credit card companies. We owe $0 to credit card companies. Woo hoo! When it comes to student loan debt, we fall above the national average, though. The average American student graduates with about $21,900 in debt (that’s $43,800 per couple). We owe about $60,000 to student lenders, or about $30,000 each. That’s about 37% more than the average. :(

Retirement

Again I struggled to find recent statistics for what the average American saves for retirement on a monthly or even yearly basis. I guess there are too many factors. But a number that gets tossed around a lot as a “recommended savings amount” is 15% of your income. We’re just getting started on retirement savings, and we made the decision to start slow for now at a 3.5%. Not so good, but our plan is to ramp up our retirement savings when we finish paying down our debt and get our liquid savings where we want it to be.

This was an eye-opening exercise that really showed me where our strengths and weaknesses lie. We should be able to easily cut our food costs, netting us about $160 a month for savings and debt repayment. We just renewed our lease, so there’s not a lot we can do about our housing costs until we move, but when we move we’ll try to get below the national average. I’d like to fall on the lower end of the scale in all of these categories (except savings and retirement, of course).

How does your budget compare to national averages?

Always track your rebate claims

In February, I bought a year’s supply of contact lenses at Costco after searching for the best price. One of the main reasons I decided to go with Costco was the $20 rebate on a year’s supply, which brought their price down to the lowest.

Costco allows online rebate claim submission, and it was pretty simple. I filled out a form with information that was readily available on my receipt. I figured it would be several weeks, maybe even a couple months, before I received my check, so I kind of forgot about it.

Yesterday it was time to replace my contacts with a new pair of lenses. For the first time since I’d submitted the claim, I thought about my rebate. It had now been over two months since I submitted it, and I haven’t received a check.

I logged onto the Costco site and checked the status of the claim using the claim number they emailed me. It was so easy that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t checked it before. According to their records, the check was sent on March 17 and should have arrived 7-10 business days after that. It didn’t.

When I called the rebate hotline, they were extremely helpful. Within about 5 minutes they were able to determine that my rebate check had been sent and returned to them. The customer service rep assured me that a new check would be in the mail by Monday sent by certified mail to ensure delivery.

While the hotline was extremely helpful in resolving the problem, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t thought to check on it. It’s only $20, an amount that many people might not bother to follow up on. If I hadn’t called last night, I probably never would have received a check.

It would have been nice if they had recognized the problem and resolved it without a call, but to be fair I don’t really expect them to track that sort of thing for me. It’s my money, after all. If I don’t care enough about it to track it, why should they?

People who regularly submit rebates for Walgreens and other stores usually have intricate systems for tracking this sort of thing. I don’t regularly submit rebates (only when I happen to buy a product that offers one), so I easily could have let it slip my mind.

When I bought my computer, it came with a $200 rebate. You better believe I tracked that one. I sent the required materials by certified mail to ensure that they weren’t lost, and frequently checked the status on my claim until I received my check. After all, $200 is a lot of money.

But $20 is just as important when it comes to getting a little money back after a purchase. It’s so easy to submit and track rebates these days, there’s no reason to lose track of that money. I takes more trouble to clip coupons than it did to log in and check on that rebate, and coupons usually only save cents. I would be careful to keep track of a $20 bill; why lose track of a $20 rebate?

Comfort & complacency – frugality’s worst enemies

A year ago, our situation was drastically different than it is today. Our savings was depleted after months of bringing in less than we needed to make ends meet. We had a little money in the bank, but not enough to sustain us for very long.

We were living frugally out of necessity. Though our spending was cut to the absolute minimum, I estimated that our savings would last only a few more months. I could count the number of restaurant meals we’d had in a year on one hand, and we never spent money on anything but necessities. We were in frugal survivor mode.

A month later we were married, enjoyed a frugal honeymoon in Washington D.C. that we’d saved all year to take, and came home with a little nest egg from generous friends and family who had attended our wedding. I wanted to save the money, but I feared that our situation would force us to spend it to continue paying our bills in a few months when the rest of our savings ran out.

Thankfully, I was hired at my job a week later. The additional income helped us start saving again, pay down our remaining credit card debt quickly, and turn our financial situation around.

Eleven months later we have no credit card debt, 60 percent of our emergency fund in the bank, and we’re on our way to paying cash for a vacation in Europe all on the equivalent of one full-time salary. We’re considerably more comfortable and nowhere near as stressed about money. And yet, we’re still in danger.

The more comfortable we become, the easier it gets to edge toward the lifestyle we’ve fought so hard to resist. When I look at our bank balances, I feel calm instead of stressed. But that makes me more likely to forgo cooking dinner for a meal out. We can afford it now, right? When I see a good deal on clothing or books, I’m tempted to drop the cash. I deserve a little treat for my hard work, don’t I?

Comfort breeds complacency, and while I’m okay with being a little more lax about our spending than we used to be, I don’t ever want to be complacent. I always want to be mindful of our spending to ensure that every penny we spend is for good reason. I’d rather go out to dinner to spend a date night with my husband than head to a restaurant because I’m too tired to cook. I’d rather save our money for one memorable experience than fritter it away on a thousand little things I won’t remember a week later.

Now that we have more income and more savings, our finances are less stressful, but our impulses are harder to control. When I see a big screen television on sale or browse a bookstore, I’m no longer resisting because I can’t afford it. After all, the money is right there. I could easily withdraw it from our savings account and buy any number of things. The more comfortable we become, the harder we have to work to fight it.

Lately I’ve felt complacency creeping in, replacing the desperation to keep our heads above water that we felt last year. I’m aware of just how much money we’ve saved and so tempted to spend it. The struggle to pay our bills has been replaced with the struggle against our culture and our spendthrift natures.

Every day I remind myself that our goals are more important than frivolity. It’s a constant battle, but it’s one that I’m willing to fight. The reward of accomplishing our financial goals is much greater than the brief satisfaction we’d get from instant gratification.