What is frugal living?
January 19, 2010 by Jenn @ Frugal Upstate
Filed under Philosophy
Photo by Marco Bellucci
What is Frugal Living?
Frugal living is not creating a budget, bringing your lunch to work, never eating out, wearing hand me down clothes, keeping the thermostat at 64 or even using coupons.
Those things can contribute to a frugal lifestyle, but they are simply strategies and techniques. Tools if you will-not frugal living itself. Frugal living can also be buying top quality, high priced clothing because it will last you longer. Or eating out every Friday night-by cutting corners somewhere else.
There is no single set of actions that can be pointed to with a cry of “There, that’s it, that is frugal living!”. As a matter of fact, some of the people around you who have most embraced frugal living may not appear to the casual eye to be frugal at all.
So how do I define it? After all, I have spent years writing about it and practicing a frugal lifestyle-I must have an opinion!
The first and most important point to me is that frugal living is a philosophy, not a set of tasks. It is the idea that we all have a finite set of resources available to us, and that we should make conscious decisions about how and where to spend those resources (be they time, effort or money) in order to reach our goals.
Frugal living accepts the fact that we can’t always have everything we want right now and makes decisions based on each individual (or family’s) priorities. Frugal living believes that some things you have to wait for, and work for. That the world doesn’t “owe” you anything, not matter how wonderful you are-that sometimes you will have more, or less than someone else, and that sometimes you will have to sacrifice in the short term for a long term goal.
Frugal living is about being conscious, and caring, and creating priorities.
What do you think?
***This is the first post in the “Frugal Living Primer” series***
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I agree with you. I consider myself frugal, but there are times when I decide to make a decision that others might not see as frugal. The thing is, because I’m frugal with other things, I can make that decision without harming my bottom line.
For example, before I quit my job and went back to school, we use to go on one kick-butt vacation every year. We’d still be frugal about it, shopping for deals, etc. But the whole deal would cost a lot.
I know some of my family members would look askance at this, but the thing is: I have hand-me-down furniture in my living room; I never buy clothing for myself that isn’t on sale; we have one — and only one TV — and it’s not HD or big-screen. (Now I’m not knocking TV; it’s just for our family, we’d rather go on vacation that buy an expensive Tv.)
I think being frugal is about making consciously decision every day to save every day in big and small ways and live within your means. An occasional, budgeted-for splurge doesn’t ruin that.
I believe being frugal is about enjoying everything everyone else does, but at a scaled back basis. We don’t have to sacrifice everything – like good music, quality products like clothing, shoes and computers. We, as frugal livers, just find ways to get these items without spending more than we can afford! I get tons of free music downloads on the web. It has opened up my “ears” to new kinds of music I might not have listened to before, when I was buying CD’s the day they were released.
I may not get EVERYTHING brand new at the store when I shop for clothing, but by being willing to wear hand me downs, I get quality items for far less money. Plus, when I shop for my kids, we need stuff that is quality and will last for two kids-we just shop clearance, we shop sales, we always have discount codes on line and I do very well for my kids at Old Navy where the clothing stands the test of time! All of this allows me to be home with my kids, instead of putting them in daycare so in order for me to go to work. And of course, we eat out all the time. We have every reward card known to man for every restaurant you can imagine, we use coupons and we don’t really buy alcoholic drinks! Dessert is home, we don’t need to spend money on that at a restaurant!
Most importantly, frugal livers SHARE. We love deals and we love to share them with people. We love to give away things we no longer need, because we think beyond ourselves.
Love it! So well thought out and so well stated!
I’m going to tell my readers to head this way and check it out!
Wow! I never really thought about it before, but you are totally right. Thanks for sharing. Can’t wait for more installments.
I believe living frugally means getting the most value for your money. For example I have a friend who is a farmer who thinks it is funny and a waste of money to buy seedlings when planting a garden rather then growing your own from seed. However I know that when i buy a healthy and vigorous tomato seedling i will have a much larger tomato harvest. I then can all the excess tomatoes from the plants and we have enough to last us through the winter. For my situation it would not be frugal to start my own plants form seed.
Another example that comes to mind is my CSA share. Several friends have tried having a CSA but they say it does not save them any money as they still spend the same amount on produce when shopping. To be frugal with a CSA share you must use the produce from your share before you buy other items.
-Robin
While the details may vary from family to family, a good overall description of frugal living is resourceful living.
I’ve learned so much about the philosophy of frugal this past year. I took a big pay cut a year ago — it was either take a pay cut or get laid off. I chose the cut, and my family made some changes to our lifestyle that weren’t as difficult to make as we thought. It’s all about being resourceful and making small changes that add up over time. As I’ve learned in the world of business, making very small changes in lots of areas can have large payoffs when they’re added together. Now that my company is rebounding some, and I have some of my pay restored, my family is committed to maintaining some of our frugal changes all in the name of using our dollars for things that have really big value to us.
Prior to us shifting to the frugal mode, we threw way too much money around on things that didn’t have much payoff. Now we’re re-prioritizing and realizing how we can save more for a rainy day and make our dollars work harder for us– instead of having us work harder for our dollars!
I thank my lucky stars that I was raised by a depression era Mother that was from a family of 9 children. I never even realized that our family was probably on the lower level of income until I was about 30 years old. My parents both worked and we always had enough to eat and a nice house. I also never saw a “real” band-aid until I was in public school or “store bought” cupcakes. I could go on and on, but the point is that we were raised in a very frugal lifestyle and I know so many ways to stretch that dollar even though I really don’t have to anymore, thanks to Mom. I am so thankful to have this lifetime of knowledge and be appreciative of it and not a person that always spends more than they have because of “wants” and not “needs”. Frugal means making the most of the money you have to me, please do not confuse this attitude and way of life with cheapness because that is not what it is about.
Love this article!! Just wanted to let you know that I’ve linked it to the “This ‘n That Thursday” post on my blog.
http://myreasonstoblog.blogspot.com/
Hope you have a great day!!!
~ Joy