Ideas for Frugal Living

Here's a list of my best ideas for frugal living:

Delay gratification. The biggest challenge for anyone interested in the benefits of living a frugal lifestyle is to delay gratification. This means, you can’t have the American drive-up window lifestyle. You have to wait.

You must have a plan with a “long view”. This means that buying the new car might have to wait for many years, but when you do buy it, you can pay cash. That is the best form of debt management I know – no debt to manage.

If you can delay gratification, then you are well on your way to wealth accumulation and financial freedom. If you cannot delay gratification, then you are a walking “tar baby” ready to get stuck to financial problems at every turn. Those sticky financial problems will keep you from being successful over the long term.

Debt free living. Here is another one of the great ideas for frugal living that has substantial rewards. Debt free living means not taking out a loan for anything, except maybe a house. In the absence of debt, you aren’t paying interest to anyone.

Paying interest may not sound like much, but it is huge, especially with big purchases and any purchase financed over a long term. If you financed $100,000 at 6% for 30 years, your payments would be roughly $600 per month.

That doesn’t sound too bad, but at the end of the loan, you would have paid $216,000 for the $100,000 you borrowed. Ouch, that is more than double. Despite what appears to be a high cost of borrowing money, the attractive part is that it makes things affordable.

The down side is that it puts you in debt – sometimes for a long time. The more things that are affordable through extension of credit, the more you are in debt and the longer you stay there.

Debt is enslavement of sorts, so the thought of being debt free should be very attractive.

I never considered having car payments because my cars were always inexpensive used vehicles. When I finally bought my first new car, I simply wrote a check. What a great feeling to know that you own what you have.

Even a house doesn’t have to put you in debt, at least not in the conventional way. There are houses on the market for less than $10,000 if you know where to look. Cheap houses sound like one of the best ideas for frugal living, doesn't it? I saw one in Saginaw, Michigan recently that came with 3 city lots. It sold for less than $3,000.

A house for less than $3,000 has to be one of the great ideas for frugal living. And it could be quite an investment if you only consider the value of the 3 city lots. Saginaw might not be where you want to live, and most certainly the house needed work, but with a $3,000 house, this could be a great way to be instantly debt free and have a roof over your head.

If you have conventional financing, you can pay off your home early and live without a mortgage payment. Imagine what it feels like not to have to write a mortgage payment every month. How much less work would you have to do if you didn’t have to pay rent or mortgage? Debt free living is an excellent goal for you to achieve as part of your money management plan.

Live off the waste of others. This is one of my favorite ideas for frugal living. As you are aware, Americans are wasteful. Just look at what is discarded from restaurants, grocery stores and bakeries. Thousands of families could live like royalty on just a small percentage of the food that is wasted each day.

The same is true for just about everything else you can imagine. What isn’t discarded is usually sold at deep discounts for smart shoppers like us. It’s out of style, I’m out of room, it lost its shine, I’m not using it anymore, we got tired of it, and a million other excuses are given for discarding things. What is your excuse for not taking advantage of such opportunities?

Garage sales, estate sales, moving sales and auctions are a great source of good used items that people want to get rid of. They are one of the wonderful ideas for frugal living. Your friends, family and neighbors will give away good used things when they replace them with new. Their waste can be a way for you to save money on things that you need and want.

Scrap wood, waste oil and unneeded building material all have value if you know how to extract it. Best of all, there is no end to the amount of stuff that people discard.

Get help and build a team. Of all the ideas for frugal living, this one has the most number of facets and therefore can be very intriguing.

Do you call a contractor every time you need help with plumbing, electrical work, or a small project? When you need help, how about asking a neighbor or friend? Wouldn’t that be a good way to save money?

Trade helping each other and you’ll learn new skills and strengthen your friendship. If you broaden your “give help and get help” circle, soon you’ll have a friendly team of capable people that can pitch in to help one another on just about anything. Now, that is thrifty living.

Just think of what kind of resource this could be. Just think of how much money you could save if your neighbor helped you fix the toilet or faucet instead of making that $50 phone call to the plumber.

Think of this as do-it-yourself and do-it-with-help. Everyone has a talent that could complement others in a group. I can’t imagine that people wouldn’t be excited about saving money and be happy about working with friends. You could share ideas for frugal living with them.

I enjoy meeting new friends and discussing ideas for frugal living and our experiences at Frugal Village and Frugal for Life and Two peas in a pod.

Here is a site that I enjoy reading and posting on. I think you'll really enjoy it too. It's a blog called Divorced Dad Frugal Dad. I especially like his simple and clear approach to writing. It's a site that is well worth reading if you're looking for quick and concise advice, suggestions and insights to get you thinking about the many aspects of a frugal and simple life of quality.

I was honored to be the first site he reviewed and established on his Blogroll, and he asked me to contribute a guest post for his site - the first ever! Here are links to my four part quest post on DDFD.

Ways to Get More MPG - Part I

Ways to Get More MPG - Part II

Ways to Get More MPG - Part III

Ways to Get More MPG - Part IV

Simple living is better. A simple life is easy to manage, costs less, and can be much more pleasant than a busy and chaotic one. If you are in a state of struggle with finances and are having difficulty managing your life, then the last thing you need is complexity.

Simple living is also one of the ideas for frugal living that is easy to implement. Keep it simple and it will take a load off of your mind so you can focus on what is really important to you. Focus is the only way I know to bring about success in any endeavor.

Do you want your airline pilot, dentist, surgeon, or banker to be focused on your well being? Of course, and so should you. Simple living is one of the ideas for frugal living that will help you have the time and energy to get focused on financial success.

Equate nearly everything to money. An easy way to lose sight of the cost of things is to fail to equate things to money. You can’t save money unless you can see just how much something costs. Since money buys us almost everything except happiness, it seems that we should put a price tag on nearly everything. At the very least, this will allow you to see the cost of something before you jump in.

Get in the habit of assessing the cost of an item, so you can take the next important step and assess its value. Only then will you know what something is worth to you.

When looking at cost, be certain to uncover all costs, now and in the future. Things like maintenance and upkeep, finance charges, insurance requirements, replacement parts, fuel consumption, storage fees, monthly fees, real estate taxes, and homeowners dues are just a few items that need to be considered. Failure to see all the costs will mask the real cost of an item.

When you know the cost of something in dollars, it's easy to then assess how hard you have to work to pay that cost, because you can simply divide your hourly pay rate into the cost of the item. If you make $20 per hour, that $100 speeding ticket is more than 5 hours of your labor when you consider that taxes are taken out as well.

Here are three more ideas for frugal living:

Trade, dicker and share.

Instead of buying at a store, paying retail price and renting, how about trading with others, dickering for a better price, and sharing with others to reduce the need to own or rent?

Trade: Local trading papers will have ads that people place when they are interested in trading. You can also post an ad for items you are willing to trade. The idea is that you get rid of something you don’t want in exchange for something you do want. Isn’t that a thrifty way of getting something? And, it can all be done without money changing hands. This is another idea for frugal living that is hard to beat.

Talk to your neighbors about what they have to trade, or what you are looking for. If you know of someone that has a knack for finding things, then let them know what you are willing to trade or would like to find. Before long, you will have a lead on an item for trade or sale.

Dicker: You don’t have to pay retail prices, even at a retailer. There are display models, damaged goods and discontinued items that can be had for way less than the original asking price. I bought a top quality hammock for $21 and it originally sold for about $100. There was nothing wrong with it, it was just not a popular seller and the home improvement store was discontinuing it. I like it better than any hammock I have ever been in.

For private sales, people expect a smart shopper to make offers instead of paying the asking price. Often there is “wiggle room” built into the price. You can admire the item but you don’t have to admire the price. Often the seller will make the item more attractive by lowering the price or throwing in other items.

Share: I heard someone say: “Never buy what you can borrow”. It is a good idea for those unusual items that you need infrequently, especially if there is good savings to be had with respect to cost and convenience.

I bought a dump truck for use around my place, with the idea that it would be useful to my handful of neighbors too. I didn’t use that as an excuse to buy it, but I thought that might be a good spin-off benefit.

So far, I have helped a neighbor get a large load of gravel up from the lower part of his pasture. He wanted to borrow my trailer that would require unloading by hand. I talked him into using the dump truck instead. He was glad he did. It saved about 6 hours of hard work.

Later that week, he had me come over to get a dump truck filled to the top with manure for my garden. It seems like a good share arrangement – he gets to use the dump truck, and I get all the manure I want.

What other tools and ideas for frugal living do you and your neighbors and friends have to share? Sharing is one of the great ideas for frugal living, and it helps build relationships.

It is okay to be different. If you look at the crowds in this country, you’ll see many people that are very much the same – they go to work in a long line of traffic to make money. They also stand in line at the bargain stores with their purchases on the weekend, they watch TV talking heads tell them what they need to be afraid of, and they crowd up in stadiums to watch a sporting event or listen to a concert. Afterwards, they get back in their cars and go home, just to get up the next work week and wait in long lines of traffic to earn money to do it all over again.

They aren’t really all the same type of people, but they aren’t very different either. Most people like to fit in. It gives them a place to be. The same is true for many people when it comes to making money, saving money, investing money and spending money. Most people want to fit in and do things that other people do.

Most people are happy with a job, a weekend of leisure, a new vehicle, and having a little “mad money” to play with after the bills are paid. Most people are also saddled with debt. This type of lifestyle won't make my list of ideas for frugal living.

If you are going to live a frugal lifestyle, you’ll be different than the mainstream population, and you have to know that it’s okay to be different.

You’ll implement ideas for frugal living, and you’ll invent some of your own. It's okay to be an individual. When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me about something that was “all the go” and I would dryly remark: “Then I’m letting it go”.

One of the most frugal and visible of early Americans was Henry David Thoreau, who had any number of ideas for frugal living. He spoke of a man not keeping pace with his companions because he hears a different drummer. He encouraged us to step to the music no matter how measured or far away.

In other words, be yourself. Being you can be a satisfying way of being self-made. This one concept is really at the heart of all the other ideas for frugal living.

If you are on your way to financial success, you are going to be different, and that’s okay. Keep your eye on the success at the end, and you’ll be there in good time. And when you arrive, there will still be ever more people driving to work each day chasing dollars to spend, while you sit back satisfied knowing that you saved your hard earned dollars by following a set of ideas for frugal living. And, those ideas helped you create a position of wealth, comfort and debt free living.

Done with Ideas for Frugal Living, take me back to Mindset of Frugality.