This article focuses on how to live frugally and gives you some interesting ideas and tips about this lifestyle. With frugal living, you can save money and invest it in more important things.
Today, we look at
- What it means to live frugally
- Best ways how to to save money
- Frugal Living Ideas and Tips To Save A Ton Of Money
What it means to live frugally
First of all, I want to clarify what frugal means. Frugality is not always a choice, but often necessary and it helps you to save money for more important things like rent. However, I think that the things you can learn while being frugal can be very valuable for life! And it can also be combined with minimalism.
If you want to know more, you can also continue here.
Best ways how to to save money – live frugally
There are a lot of reasons why you want to save money, so here I will show you a few tips. While I explain the Best ways how to to save money on another article, here’s the breakdown:
See where your money goes
This is crucial and every tip will be useless if you don’t look closely where you spend your money.
There are sort of two areas which cost a lot of money, social and subscriptions.
The first one includes dining out, takeout, delivery or a drink with a few friends. This is one area you have to watch closely and reduce spending
The second area are subscriptions like cable or Netflix and impulse purchases. Here you have to reduce too.
Finally, I want to highlight my other article again, since it may help you realize why your money is vanishing.
If you have done that and tracked your spending, but want to improve yourself, then here are some tips:
Frugal Living Ideas and Tips To Save A Ton Of Money
Home and utilities
- Reduce your subscriptions. You don’t need cable, HBO Max etc
- If you need a car, own only one that just does the job
- Buy a used car! Everything else is wasting money
- Why? Cars Drop in Value! A 30K car loses 3K in value as soon as you drive it, so in one minute.
- Click here to know more
- Try to rent utilities for your home (works only in liberal cities)
- Research if buying a home is better than renting.
- If you want to buy something nonetheless, put it a month in your cart. Do not temptation rule over you
- DIY – Do it yourself. Try to use Youtube and Google and fix it yourself
- Be not only frugal, but also minimalist
Finances
- Try not to overspend on your credit card. I have for instance a Prepaid.
- Pay of all debt and build then an emergency stash
- List all your expenses from a month and see where you spend money
- Make then a budget and do not overspend
- If you want to travel, travel frugally
Clothing
- Buy second hand
- Buy on eBay or other online auction shops
- Try to get your items on sale
- No window shopping. That just screams spending money
- Make laundry soap yourself. For instance this one
- Have a minimalist wardrobe. Buy a few but good quality clothes. Second hand maybe
- Dry your clothes outside. Yes, even during winter (but takes longer)
Groceries and Food
- The most important: Compare prices with Price per Weight!
- Read my guide Save money and eat healthy, the guide – Yes, it’s possible
- Buy store brands aka generic brands
- Make a meal plan for a week and buy only that
- Buy in bulk if it is the least expensive
- Beware: At least in Europe bulk-shopping is still more expensive than the cheapest generic brand, so always check Price per Weight!
- Take advantage of loyalty programs if it doesn’t persuade you to spend more
- Compare prices of several chains
- Try not to buy Soft drinks or so, drink tap water or if it’s unsafe bottled water
- Cook yourself and cut out junk food.
- In addition, reduce eating out or delivery.
- Use coupons if you can
- Use your freezer and freeze what you can’t eat.
Health and Body
- Eat healthy and avoid unhealthy cheap eats
- Do some exercise, like walking or swimming
- Being healthy saves you tons of medical bills and therefore money
- For instance, commute by bike if you can, walk to your starbucks…
- Cut your own hair if you can. The first few times will be awful, but it saves so much money
Clothes and the hierarchy
Well, let me explain what this means: I have good clothes and shoes which are very durable. However, they break down. In this case, do not throw them away, but use them differently. In my case:
- 1.Rank: My best and newest clothes/shoes are for outside, with friends etc
- 2.Rank: Little bit torn up clothes are worn at home or if I have to clean something
- 3.Rank: Quite used clothes/shoes are downgraded and used while gardening or other dirty work
- 4.Rank: If the clothes just shouldn’t be worn anymore, then I cut them and use them for cleaning the floor or so
- In the end, they get thrown away
Frugal Reddit
To conclude, I wanted to show you that there is a group on Reddit that discusses and shares tips on living and travelling frugally. So if you want to know more about frugality, click here.