How Can I Be More Frugal – How To Do More With Less Money
When people are young they have no concept of money. If you ask kids how much a house costs answers will range from $50 to $10,000,000. They simply have no clue. For many adults, this lack of financial awareness often results in poverty, desperation, and misery.
Being careful with money can be broken down into the following:
- Buy only what you need.
- Buy the most cost-effective items.
- Think before you buy, don’t buy on impulse.
- Decide if you really need it
- Change your lifestyle to reduce spending
- Don’t allow yourself to be influenced by others
By following these basic rules you can drastically reduce your spending without suffering. You then get to either reduce any earnings shortfall or even start a savings/rainy day fund.
Let’s have a look at ways to reduce spending in a little more depth.
Eating out / buying food outside
You should avoid this where possible if you really want to begin saving money. If you eat in restaurants especially. Going out to eat, depending on the frequency can really chew a large hole in your budget.
If you eat out more than once a week you are overdoing it. If you are worrying about money then this should be one of the first things to go.
Thanks to the internet you can get access to some amazing recipes online that will let you save an absolute packet and will taste just as good to boot.
Cooking food at home
Cooking at home instead of going out will save you so much money. Even if you buy a lot of cheap takeout food you will be better off. Cooking at home not only allows you to control your spend but it also can be quite therapeutic if you are feeling stressed about money.
Cooking at home will generally be healthier too. When you buy processed food, takeout food or even when you go out to eat, you don’t know what is in the food.
Cooking at home will let you see everything that goes into each dish. If you have any sensitivity to food this will disappear as well, another health benefit.
If you cannot cook then you can hit the internet for free cookery classes. With over a billion websites globally you will not struggle to find someone who has provided a recipe or video showing you how to cook just about any dish.
Food shopping
Now you are cooking more at home you will now need to look at grocery shopping. There are some sneaky tricks that the grocery stores do to get you to part with your hard-earned cash. But here are some ways to beat them at their own game.
Look at the top and bottom shelves: Many stores keep the items with the biggest markup at eye level as these items are more likely to be seen and purchased. Look everywhere at everything. You may find some great deals looking both high and low.
Check the store brand: Some items are quite generic, meaning that inside the packaging the product is pretty much identical. Take some items like flour and sugar. Does your local supermarket have it’s own budget flour mills or no frills sugar refineries? Probably not.
What they do is send their own packaging to these processing centers and you get in the home brand what you get in the premium brand. The difference? You are not paying a premium for the advertising and other overheads of the premium brand.
Buy loose fruit and vegetables: When you are next in the supermarket your instinct may be to grab a bag or carton of fruit or veg but stop and have a look at the price. You may find you are paying extra for the convenience and the extra packaging too. By taking a few minutes to select your own you can often save quite a bit.
Go after you have eaten: By not going shopping when you are hungry, you will be less likely to fill your cart with extra goodies, like pastries, snacks and candy.
Make a list and stick to it: It’s easy to go and just mill around grabbing what you think you need, but make a list and stick to it and you will be far less likely to overspend or buy the wrong items (Before I started making lists I had over 30 cans of chopped tomatoes in my kitchen cabinets)
Buying clothes
Are you a person that just has to have the latest fashion items and awesome brands? Why? It’s common for people to like certain brands and buy them religiously but is there really a valid reason why you spent $250 on a pair of sneakers instead of $50?
One of the reasons we don’t want to buy cheaper brands is that the quality is poor. If that’s the case then you should not be buying it at all. But if you are really honest with yourself you may stop and consider that the main reason you buy top brands is so you can show off your purchases. So your friends can look at you and heap you with praise and shower you with compliments.
If this is the case then STOP! If your friendships rely on what clothing brands you wear then you need new friends. If you rely on top brands to feel good about yourself then you need to fix this as it’s an issue with your own sense of self worth.
Buy decent quality clothes at the best price you can get them for. As you get older you will realize that wasting your money on clothes can stop you doing many other things in life.
Lastly, don’t buy more clothes than you need. This is crucial. You can buy to replace but not pretend it’s an investment. Clothes depreciate in value rapidly and you can only ever wear one set of clothes at a time. If you can go more than 2-3 weeks without doing laundry and you can wear a full set of fresh clothes everyday then you have too many.
Transport
If you have a car what kind of car do you drive? Is it a high end vehicle with a huge engine? If so then trade down. Having a car is great but as long as it’s reliable and in good condition then you don’t need to spent tens of thousands of dollars on it.
Older cars depreciate more slowly and cars with smaller engines cost less to insure and cost less in gas to run.
If you have to use public transport then do you go everywhere by taxi or Uber? Consider the bus or train when it’s convenient, especially when they are putting on extra services like peak hours.
Subscriptions
If you are online then there’s a good chance you may have movie subscriptions like Netflix or Amazon movies. If you do then consider getting rid of them. You can put your time to better use by watching education videos from TED or YouTube instead.
Gym membership
If you have a gym membership then you may be able to stop or reduce it to a cheaper plan. I used to go to the gym but now I do bodyweight exercises at home. My only investment was in a set of bands which I use instead of weights. For some exercises I can go to my local park and use the bands on climbing frames for exercises like pull-ups leg raises etc.
I do this as it gives me a chance to get out of the house and away from my computer. Also its free. I don’t need to spend anything now to keep in shape.
Phones and contracts
Do you need to have the latest phone as soon as it comes out? Why? It’s the same as buying expensive clothing brands. The main reason is vanity. but if you wait and buy the previous years model not only will it be substantially cheaper it will often be on a lower contract too.
Assess what you need from your phone contract and shop around. You need to look at minutes for talking, data and texts. Look at your standard usage over the last few months and switch to a contract that suits you better, chances are you will waste less of the other things you rarely use and it can lower your monthly spend.
Buying a phone outright and then getting a contract can be a good option too if you buy a phone model that’s been out around 2 years. It can reduce the contract plan by half and the cost of the handset by over two thirds as well.
Minimalist
Minimizing the things that you actually need in life can be daunting at first but after getting into the swing of it, you may find it fun.
Having less stuff means buying less stuff. Having less stuff can also mean you can live somewhere smaller and save money there too. The accommodation is smaller will be cheaper and so will the utilities.
Gifts
Buying gifts for people does not need to break the bank, if you have family and friends that expect you to cough up over $100 for any gift then you need to reset their expectations.
Try learning arts and crafts or some other skill you can put to good use. If you are good then you can make a gift rather than buy it. I used to give out my signature chocolate orange brownies with a white chocolate center. Nobody ever complained about getting them and they were quite easy and cheap to make.
Holidays
Going on holiday can be quite expensive but if you do need to get away from it all then you can reduce the cost of your trip dramatically.
Stay in country: Not flying to your destination can save you hundreds, which you can put to much better use. I spoke with a friend who was going to go to Japan. They said they would need to budget at least $25,000 for a family of 4 for 2 weeks. I though they were insane for throwing away such a huge amount of money. I told them Japan can be done much cheaper than that but they wouldn’t listen. After returning it was no surprise that they were moaning about being broke.
Self catering: Yes you want to get away from it all but that does not mean you have to get away from all your money too by throwing away on expensive restaurants. Eat out occasionally if you have to but limit it where possible.
Souvenirs: You don’t need to come back with 30% of the goods available in the area you are staying in. You may have fallen in love with that [insert uneccessary purchase here] but it is essential to your normal life and how much will you use it in the future? If it’s ornamental then try to resist.
In conclusion:
By following the simple steps above can be enough to put an extra few hundred dollars or more back into your pocket each month.
By letting go of your materialistic tendencies and your desire to impress those around you, you will find a new sense of calm and freedom you never felt before.
