Frugal living is smart living. To live frugally, you need not have to make do with a poor quality lifestyle. All you need to do is reduce your expenses and substitute your present lifestyle choices with budget-friendly ones.
Here we walk you through these great frugal living tips to get your finances in shape and save enough for rainy days ahead.
Grow Your Food
Even if you use grocery coupons and stop ordering takeouts, you’ll still have to visit the supermarket to keep food on the table for your family. The produce section of the store is often the most expensive area.
Mason Jar DIY Herb Garden. via pioneersettler. One way to save money is by growing vegetables and herbs in your own garden. This isn’t a foolproof idea though, as you’ll have to combat initial costs, bad weather and intensive labor requirements to reap benefits. To mitigate all of these, consider growing expensive vegetables like tomatoes.
The newspaper will prevent the seeds from germinating until it decompose after about 18 months. via rosemaryonthetv. You can also try composting to reduce costs. Using a double layer of newspaper will prevent the weeds from competing with your vegetables during the growing season. Cover the newspaper with wood mulch in order to weigh it down. Ensure to use only regular newsprint and not the ones with glossy prints for the purpose of composting.
Cut Cable Not TV
Save yourself tons of cash by getting rid of your cable. via sugarandsoul. Cable is a big expense in today’s world. Your bill may soar up to $100 a month for just watching TV. Since TV is not something you can live without really, a simple idea would be to just cut off the cable cord.
If you can’t give up your favorite shows, do not fret. Head to the local electronics supply store and buy an antenna. A basic model costs under $50. With this you can tune into lots of local stations. Since many cable providers give digital compression on Hi-Definition signals, you will be getting a better quality of HD image with your antenna.
If you’re using a broadband internet service, consider accessing TV shows without the cable. Many services offer to stream TV shows for you, but to use that service you will need to connect your television to the internet. You can do this through an Ethernet connection or a separate device, such as an Xbox 360 or PS 3.
Popular television streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu offer both past and current TV episodes. All these services cost significantly less than cable.
Usually, people find it difficult to get rid of cable because they are unable to watch live sports. There ‘s still a solution to this- several sports packages available through PlayStation 3 allow live game streaming. However these packages are extremely expensive. Even the websites that stream live events are often not legal or difficult to access.
Library Love
Living without internet seems impossible, yet doing away with a full-time internet connection is a great opportunity to save cash by reducing expenses. Go to the library which offers free internet access. Apart from that, it holds an exhaustive collection of books that you can check out for your research. Libraries also maintain lots of DVDs for its members. If you rent these resources instead of purchasing books and DVDs, you will be able to make a remarkable change in your expenses.
Consider Staying with a Roommate
This is one tip that can save you tons of money each year. All your major expenses get slashes by half. Getting a roommate may seem a pretty big sacrifice at first, especially if you’re among those who love their privacy. Yet when you commit yourself to frugal living, this is something that you should think about. Invite your friend to live with you. In case, your roommate is a stranger, perform a background check and ensure to get a security deposit upfront. Also plan out your schedules together and determine the roles that each of you will play in managing the place. With time you’ll get used to this mode of life pretty well.
Work on Your Health and Body
Whoever said that you need to go the gym to stay fit? There are many simple yet cost-effective ways to take care of your health and gymming is not one of them. When you do crunches, sit-ups and push-ups regularly, you attain a healthier mind and body. This automatically keeps bad habits at bay and reduces your inclination to shop, eat out, hit the bar and waste away your paychecks in other meaningless forms of entertainment. You can use an exercise ball to workout at home, or use the iron rods of your home to do pull-ups.
Doing a weekly meal prep helps you save money and time in the kitchen. via frugalitygal. Try to dump costly junk foods and opt for home-made salads, soups, sandwiches and grilled stuff. For this, you’ll need to reassess your grocery shopping habits. Plan out your weakly meal regimen and buy your groceries online. This way you will be able to avail occasional coupons and save on cash. Also make sure to stick to your list of ingredients every time. With this method of frugal living, you will be healthier, happier and your savings account won’t suffer either.
Use Homemade Stuff
Once you embark on frugal living, you’ll discover that every aspect of your life can make do with a few changes. Even with a simple thing like laundry, you will be amazed by this simple way to save cash on it. For starters, try making your own detergent.
All-in-One Laundry Bombs. via popsugar. That’s not difficult at all. You just have to garner things like borax, soap, washing powder, measuring cup, knife, bucket and water. Next, heat water in a five gallon bucket. Shave off the soap in it and add in a cup of washing soda as well as half a cup of borax. Stir it for a few minutes and let it stay overnight. You can also add a squeeze of lemon to the mixture for a pleasant scent. The next morning you can use this cheap homemade formulation to do your laundry!
This DIY drying rack would be great especially if your laundry room is small. via imperfectlypolished. When you dry the clothes, refrain from using the dryer. Lay them on in a line in your yard or apartment. This way you will be able to save hundreds of dollars every year.
Curtail Using Coupons
Even the expert frugalist falls for the attractive shopping weapon that the coupon is. Just because you’ve won yourself a coupon, that doesn’t mean that you have use it up as soon as possible. These glittering little offers do save you money on many things needed, but they are after all, a marketing tactic to lure you into purchasing the retailer’s product. When you use the coupon, make sure that you really need it. Remember, those impulsive purchases that you convince yourself to be super deals are often not. Instead, they accumulate over the entire year to form a sizable dent on your savings account. When you don’t need an item, there’s no point of buying it, even if it comes at a steep discount.
Monitor Your Budget Quarterly
Monitoring your budget yearly is not quite a sensible option. This is because you could have easily cut down on unnecessary expenses 10 months ago. This would result in extra savings of worth 10 months. The frugalist always evaluates his budget on a quarterly basis, to stay on the right track consistently. Make a list of all your major expenses like rent, cable bill, food, internet, transport costs and home maintenance. Calculate your expected savings and actual savings and determine your net expenditure. This way you’ll be able to eliminate the expenses you don’t need.
Save Money on Transportation
A significant portion of the income goes into paying gas bills. Consider walking and biking if you need to cover a short distance by road. Nowadays the world is taking steps to promote sustainable development. There is no dearth of branded electric scooters to fulfill the transportation needs of daily commuters. Get one of those scooters. They run on electricity not gas. This will help you save up on hundreds of dollars every year. Another solution would be to run errands in groups. If all the people of your locality drive to equidistant places for work, consider driving to office together in the same car. The same applies to taking your children to school.
With these great frugal living tips, you’re sure to emerge healthier, happier and richer over the next few months! When you do start living frugally, you’ll discover that all your bad habits will start off to wane off and pave the way for a fulfilling life, that leaves you with enough energy and money to realize all your long-forgotten dreams.