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Frugal LivingIs Frugal Living Really Possible?
Frugal living can be smart living. It can also be fun to see how much you can stretch your family income. Once you start living more frugally, you’ll easily begin to see just what Less is more really means. And you just might become hooked! If you research ways that you can live more frugally, you will literally find thousands of ideas. How far you want to take it, will depend on how frugal you want to be and how many of the ideas you’ll choose to use in your daily life. Some folks will go to what most would consider the extreme by doing such things as saving their soap shavings, the tiny pieces of soap left when you’re almost finished with a bar of soap. They’ll save them until they have enough for another bar. Okay, you might be thinking, I don’t want to go that far, but I will limit my paper towel usage and use kitchen wash towels to clean up instead. Alternatively, you might choose to cut costs by shopping monthly in bulk for your household supplies or food. You might also realize that you do not need a dozen pairs of shoes, one for every outfit in your wardrobe, but only a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of sandals, and a pair of dress shoes. You also might be able to live with shopping on eBay or at garage sales for great deals on your children’s clothing and gifts. Another way to contribute to your frugal living efforts is to use coupons. Coupons are plentiful these days, easily found online, in the local paper or even at local discount stores. Living Frugally And How You WorkSome people believe that being a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) or a Work At Home Mom (WAHM) can help you to live frugally. This may well be true. After all, working at home saves the cost of daycare, eating lunches out, gasoline, and work wardrobe and dry-cleaning expenses.If you do work outside the home, you can practice living frugally by taking the bus, carpooling, or maybe even riding your bike to work. You can also take your lunch rather than dining out daily. Evaluate Where You Spend Your MoneyRealizing how much you spend on the random and varied purchases you make each week is one of the first steps to living frugally. There are many, many ways to save money and live frugally. Living more frugally can be an easy way to cut your family’s expenses and save dollars.I've always been a frugal person. It helps that I don't like shopping ;-) But my passion is organizing and one thing I know is that it's essential to keep your money and finances organized in order to live frugally. A friend and SBI! colleague of mine, Melanie of Transform Your Money provides some great tips, ideas and strategies for frugal living. Melanie talks about the fact that frugal living does not necessarily mean "going without" or never spending money. When I read Melanie's thoughts on this it really opened my eyes because that's exactly what I had been taught growing up. Thanks to the great ideas and tools she provides, I have learned that I can live frugally AND enjoy a splurge or special purchase on occasion. You can too! Frugal Living Helps You Be OrganizedOne of the benefits of living frugally is it requires you to be more organized. For example, let’s say you decide to stop buying convenience foods in your quest for frugal living. You’ll need to organize your meal planning, shopping and food preparation time if it's going to work.Living frugally has other benefits too. You’ll be buying less things which means you'll be spending less time taking care of them. As you begin to test the waters of frugal living, you are only limited by your imagination! Living by the "Less is More" philosophy can make life less complicated too.
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