Frugal Living for Beginners

Are you brand new to the frugal living lifestyle? Are you looking for a guide on frugal living for beginners? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

After all, frugal is my middle name.

Frugal Living for Beginners

Frugal living is a lot more than just spreadsheets and grocery ads. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of ways to get your finances under control using spreadsheets and physical organization, but that’s not where a frugal living beginner should start.

Frugal living for beginners starts with your relationship with money and exactly how you view it.

Frugal living is equal parts numbers and mental strategy.

When you’re first trying to figure out how to live the frugal lifestyle, it can feel like a never-ending numbers game. If you don’t enjoy math and Microsoft Excel sheets, you can get easily discouraged. I will always tell you that the first step to budgeting is tracking (this is the hill I am planning to die on), but we also have to deploy the other side of your brain.

Saving money is like the game of golf. In order to get the lowest number, you have to mentally prepare yourself.

Don’t be scared. Grip the club a little tighter and set your stance. I’ve got some tricks for you that will surely help you get that birdie.

Think Small

“If you want to buy a house, stop going to Starbucks every morning!”

We’ve all heard it. We all hate it.

Why do we hate it? Because it’s not true.

Cutting out your daily coffee run will not save you enough money to buy a house.

But, small changes like that can save you money for other things, just maybe not that three bedroom, two bath on the lake that you’ve always dreamed about.

Frugal living for beginners’ tip #1 is: Think small.

I like to think of it this way: instead of thinking “only”, start thinking what else that money could be used for.

“It’s only $10” becomes “that’s enough gas to get me to work and back”

“It’s only $30” becomes “that’s a dinner for two”

Because that five, ten, twenty dollars will easily start to add up over time.

To make my fourth-grade math teacher proud, I will now show my work.

Five dollars a day may not seem like much, but saving $5 a day is enough to pay for:

• My home, car, and camper insurance for the year
• Five days in Colorado in September

Saving $2 a day will be enough to pay for:

• A plane ticket to Minnesota
• My homeowner’s and camper insurance
• Three months’ worth of gas in my truck

Tease me all you want but yes, I am going to Giant Customer Service to turn in my $1 coupon, because that $1 will add up over time. I know that and now I’ve proved it to you too.

To quote Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist:

Now, before I get all the nasty-gram comments, I’m not saying to never let Wawa see your face again. I am simply saying to do the math. What else could you contribute to if you only did a coffee run two or three days a week? Do the math. Track the spending. Think small.

Make it at home

I know, I know. I just said that cutting out your morning coffee isn’t going to save you enough to buy a house, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about is the fact that I bet you (almost) never buy just coffee. You go into the gas station for coffee, and you walk out with a coffee, a pack of donuts, a new phone charger, and that Snickers bar that was looking at you all delicious.

That’s why frugal living for beginners’ tip #2 is: Make it at home.

Not only will cutting out your daily coffee run save you $2-$5 a day (refer to table above), but it will also eliminate the impulse buying that we are all so conditioned for.

(We will get to more on impulse buying later)

This is similar to going to the grocery store when you’re hungry, you probably don’t even realize all that you are buying. To see how much you’re spending per week on “just coffee”, keep your receipts and add them up on Sunday. Bonus points for marking which trips only included coffee.

I bet the results will surprise you.

What are some ways you can follow the same routine without a morning gas station run? I’m glad you asked! Here’s a few ideas:

• Make your coffee or tea at home (duh). You can buy a coffee maker that is set to start brewing before you even wake up. #gamechanger
• Buy other drinks (energy drinks, for example) in bulk. Amazon and Costco are great for this. You can also pay attention to grocery store sales and buy them in bulk then.
• Meal prep and freeze breakfast at home. These delicious egg bagels from The Gunny Sack are a perfect example.
• Take water with you. You can buy a large, insulated water bottle so you have water all day. Good for you and good for the environment!

Making it at home is similar to ordering your groceries online, the temptation of Cool Ranch Doritos isn’t there to sway you.

Quality over Quantity

So, this one time at band camp, my cousin gave me a hard time because I always wear the same bathing suit every time we go on our yearly beach vacation. When I looked at her and asked “why would I need more than one?”, she didn’t have an answer.

I live in Pennsylvania. I don’t go to the beach every day. For the few times a year I go to the beach, one quality bathing suit suits me just fine (pun definitely intended).

So, frugal living for beginners’ tip #3 is: Quality over quantity.

This is an important frugal living tip, I probably should have put it closer to the top. Capitalism has made us believe that we need all the things. We don’t, I promise.

In reality, having one or two of each item is more than enough.

Do you really need sixteen pairs of jeans? Can you get five quality pairs and keep up on your laundry?

In addition, by searching for quality over quantity, you are more likely to have the item for a longer amount of time and therefore, can go longer in between purchases.

Luckily, we have started to make our way back to quality products being available for purchase. Do your research. Choose quality, sometimes multi-function, items.

Final note: just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it is quality. It usually just means they’re good at marketing. Most of my favorite, everyday products (like my sunglasses or my hiking socks) don’t require you to have a six-figure income.

Pick your Priorities

The hardest frugal living for beginners’ tip is to have a serious conversation with yourself about your priorities.

We’d all love to be able to do everything, but most of us can’t. We have to pick and choose.

It will require some soul searching, but lesson number four is: Pick your priorities.

I’d love to buy new countertops AND spend five days in Colorado, but I can’t do both. My priority is traveling, and my current countertops will hold the mixing bowl the same way granite would. I made my choice.

You can also find ways to save on your priorities. If being with friends is important to you, find a cheaper way to spend time together such as movie night at home or volleyball in the park. If traveling is your priority, there are literally one billion hacks for saving on travel.

So, what are your priorities? What are the things you value the most? Define them. Write them down. Manifest them to the universe. Pick your priorities and then cut back on everything else (within reason, your kids still have to eat).

Determine Need Vs. Want

This is kind of piggybacking off the “priorities” tip, but you need to determine what in your life is a need and what in your life is a want.

Do you NEED to buy all those books? Do you NEED to buy new clothes? Or do you just really, really, really want to?

Don’t take this as me saying to NEVER do or buy the things you want, I’m just saying to really consider what is a need vs what is a want.

The rent, the electric bill, the food on the table are all needs.

The new clothes, the new house decor, the new car are all wants. You could live without them, regardless of how uncomfortable it might be.

Thus, this frugal living for beginners’ tip is: Determine need vs. want.

Patience

I told you that we’d come back to impulse buying.

Marketing 101: Thoughtful people spend less.

That’s why the sixth frugal living for beginners’ tip is: Patience.

If you see something that you want, that you must have, that you simply can’t live without, the most important thing you need to do is wait.

If you’re feeling that desperate for an item or a service, walk away. Go home, eat, go to sleep, drink your coffee, and then come back to it. Do you really need it? or do you just really want it? Will it add value to your life? Can you afford it?

If you come back to it in a week, have all those questions answered, and you still think it’s a good idea: go ahead and pull the trigger. If you’re lucky, maybe it will have gone on sale by the time you got back to it.

(P.S. The first section as you walk into Target or the aisles that you have to walk through to get to a register in a store are called the “impulse section”. Think about it).

Patience is a virtue, as they say, but it also an acquired skill. Patience is a vital mental money saving hack.

Learn how to say “NO”

We don’t like to say it. It sounds nasty and harsh, but sometimes it is necessary.

That’s why today’s final frugal living for beginners’ tip is: Learn to say no.

As mentioned before, you can’t do it all. Sometimes, you have to tell your friends that you can’t go out tonight, you can’t take that trip, or you can’t make that wedding. Other times, you have to tell yourself that you can’t afford that right now.

If you’re embarrassed to have that conversation with your friends, borrow this script from Your Rich BFF, Vivian.

Learning to say no to your friends and to yourself can be uncomfortable, but nothing is cheap these days. Those “yeses” add up and sometimes, it is not on your priority list.

Say “no” now, so you can say “yes” later.

Just like the game off golf, frugal living for beginner’s is as much mental strategy as it is physical strategy.

Even if you’re just starting, don’t get discouraged. You can get there. By using these tips, you can train your both sides of your brain to work together just a little bit better.

Happy saving everyone!