While I have thoroughly enjoyed writing about frugal living in Richmond, there’s a time and season for everything and it’s now time for me to move on. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue with a frugal lifestyle, I’ll always be a thrifty person looking for ways to save more. Hopefully all the tips and information I’ve provided in my many past articles have helped other Richmonders live a frugal lifestyle. My final thoughts on frugal living are centered around some great tips on how to have a frugal approach to life and some of the best tips I can offer on how to live better on less.
Key Points for a Frugal Approach to Life & Living on Less:
Learn the Basics of Frugal and Simple Living – Learn the basics of frugal and simple living, meaning you should learn how to budget your money and create a budget, save for unexpected costs, retirement, and for anything you want, clear your mind and house of clutter and realize the difference between wants and needs. Make a plan to follow—it could be a one-year plan or even longer if you wish. Know how much debt you owe, how much your annual salary is and how much you want to save. Work on paying off debt so that you can have more money to save and more spending money for things you need or want. Look at where you can cut back and get rid of expenses to pay down debt quicker and save money faster. For example, do you need cable TV? Do you need a landline and a cell phone? Do you need subscriptions to magazines and so on?
Anything you feel comfortable getting rid of (at least short term) can help contribute to your debts, bills and necessary costs like food. Getting rid of things that are nice to have, but not necessary, doesn’t have to be permanent—you can always get those things again later if you still want them once you have your debt and budget under control. If you’re barely getting by or don’t have much extra money to put towards debt, savings or little things then cutting back can definitely help free up some money in your budget. Being debt free and having access to more of your money can give you the freedom to save more towards retirement (and other goals like purchasing a home, paying for children’s education, etc), the ability to spend more on things you enjoy and give you breathing room if an emergency or lay-off were to happen.
Follow Through on Living Simply and Minimally – Nothing in life will happen unless you commit to it and follow through with it, so take living a more simple and minimal life seriously and follow through on your goals. This doesn’t mean you have to change everything overnight, start out with small changes and work your way toward a frugal lifestyle. Being frugal also doesn’t mean depriving yourself either as some may think. It’s okay to splurge every once in a while, just do so responsibly, like paying cash for an item instead of putting it on credit or paying your credit card off every month if you use credit cards instead of cash.
Shop Wisely – This is a no brainer; shop smarter for things you need such as food, household supplies, health supplies, clothing, furniture, and appliances. Save on essentials by shopping at thrift stores and consignment shops, using coupons, watching the sales and buying different items at different times of the year. Shopping all year round and/or using layaway for gifts and for the holidays are some good ideas too. Shopping after the holidays is another good way to save for next year. Wrapping paper, boxes, cards and all sorts of other Christmas stuff will be marked down (usually half price) after Christmas, this is the perfect time to stock up for next year. There are a lot of different ways to shop smarter, such as knowing the prices of the top 10 or 20 things your family purchases the most so you can figure out when those items are at their lowest cost, making a shopping list and sticking to it, staying within a monthly budget, buying in bulk (if you have a large family), planning meals ahead of time and only shopping every two weeks to a month for the majority of food items you need.
Travel Cheaply – Refer to some of my past articles about how to travel cheaply and for frugal travel destinations for vacationing. There are many ways to travel cheaply and save on the cost of seeing friends and family who live out of town or out of the country. Vacations planned ahead of time can save on the cost of going on vacation. Also, setting aside a certain amount every week or month can help with the cost of taking a vacation or traveling.
Make Good and Informed Decisions – Your choices really do carry consequences and the small decisions you make every day can have a big impact on your financial life. Making good decisions can help you both immediately and down the road too. Getting your finances in order early in your life and learning frugal living tactics early can spare you a lot of financial trouble in the future. For example, having a good credit score is important if you want to take out a loan for a house, car or other big purchase. Establishing credit and having good credit can help you, whereas having bad credit scores can hurt you. Making good financial decisions cannot be stressed enough, plus, making good decisions now will most likely make your life easier later.
Look for New Ways to Save Continuously - Never stop learning about how to save more and spend less. Always look for new ways to save and cut back on expenses. There are a lot of ideas out there floating around on blogs, news web sites and personal finance sites that list ideas you could try. Try to make your finances easily manageable and always live below your means, not above them.
Value in your Time and Money – When making purchases, think about how long you have to work in order to earn the amount of money you’re going to spend on the item you want to purchase. It can really put things into perspective when you realize that you might have to work a whole day just to spend that money on something you don’t really need like a new designer purse or really expensive jeans. For example, if you’re making $10 dollars an hour and you want to purchase something that costs $100 dollars, that’s 10 hours of work you have to do to pay for that purchase. Do you want to trade your time for the item you want? Realize that there is a trade off you make with every purchase. Your time is your life. While most of us have to work full time jobs to pay our bills and for our needs and wants, if you keep yourself in check when it comes to wants and splurging then you could potentially retire early and/or work less.
Sharing Instead of Owning – Sharing items instead of owning is a revolutionary new idea that could have a big impact on how we all live. Imagine, instead of buying every tool you need to fix stuff in your home and then having to store those tools you just go to the store and rent them or borrow them, then take them back when you’re done. There are a lot of items (like tools) that you may only use every once in a while over the course of your life. If you only need this item once or twice in your life, why buy it and store at your home when you can rent it cheaper and then take it back so it’s not taking up your space. You could borrow stuff from friends and family too. Imagine sharing a car with a group of people instead of having to own a car. All the costs are split so it makes for a much more inexpensive option. There are a lot of ideas coming about from sharing instead of owning, especially when it comes to things like music and movies.
Focus on what you Love – If you’re not worried about money and you are somewhat stable when it comes to your finances you can focus on what really matters like doing things you enjoy, exploring your passions, relationships, living life to its fullest (whatever that means to you), learning new things, having new experiences, creating, traveling, supporting charity and doing things that make a difference in the lives of others like giving back to your community or the world. You don’t have to have a huge bank account and be extremely rich to focus on what you enjoy doing, you just have to manage your finances and plan for what you would like to do. So what do you want to do? Whatever it is plan for it and make it a reality.
Save, Save, Save – Saving for the future is tough, but necessary. Many people want to live for today and put off saving for tomorrow, then tomorrow never comes and then all of a sudden they’re close to retirement age and they have almost nothing to show for it because of many poor financial decisions made throughout their life. Or, maybe they were dealt a really bad hand and lost a lot of income in the stock market or some other way, when they fully intended on saving. Unless you plan on working for the rest of your life and living paycheck to paycheck you must make it a priority to save, even if it’s just a little bit, from every paycheck and every month.
Something is better than nothing right? Start out small and work your way up as you cut back on expenses, increase your income or take on other income streams. You will be lured to spend any extra money you make but it’s important to save. Saving money and putting it aside for a rainy day can help you get through a layoff from a job, a medical emergency, unexpected auto or home repairs or a tough financial time. Plan for the unexpected things in life like: your car breaks down or needs a repair, a refrigerator or other appliance stops working, a leaky roof, a potential layoff coming in your work, needing some kind of medical help like an unexpected surgery.
Life doesn’t give you a heads up that these types of things are coming, but we all know they’re possibilities that can happen to any and all of us. Be responsible and plan for the unexpected ahead of time so that way you won’t freak out when something happens and you don’t have enough money to pay for it.
Diversify Your Income – If you cut back and you still can’t seem to afford what you need then it may be time to think about taking on a freelance job or a part-time job on top of your full time job. If you don’t have a full time job you might have to work several part time jobs to make a full time income in this still volatile economy. Do whatever it takes to try to pull in more income and make it work. Don’t put all of your savings into one account either.
Diversify and open up a couple of types of savings like a 401K, IRA, savings, money market savings and investments in things like CDs, bonds, gold, silver, dividend-paying stocks and so on. Bring in some extra income by having a yard sale, selling on Craigslist, Ebay and Etsy. Selling for direct sales companies like Avon is a good choice if you are good at selling and have loyal buyers who love the products. Build passive income streams that continue to pay you after you’ve done the work, for example, writing a book, a blog, writing articles, affiliate marketing, stocks that pay dividends and a few other ideas you can find online.
If you can afford to purchase an inexpensive continuous money maker like soda machines, snack machines, candy machines and sticker/toy machines you could make an income off of those machines continuously. However, it will require continuous work to service the machines and re-stock them. If you’re not scared from the downturn in the housing market and can afford to do so you could purchase an investment property and sell it when the market rebounds. If you have a lot of money saved you could invest in kiosk machines like Redbox to make money off of continuously.
If you work for a company that still offers a pension, you are one of the lucky few. Pensions have sadly fallen by the wayside, as most companies no longer offer them. Don’t depend on Social Security entirely for retirement as it may not be something that is around forever and even if it does stick around it will not be enough money for someone to live off, plan on needing at least one to two additional income streams in retirement in order to live comfortably. In order to have enough to live on when you retire you should figure out exactly how much you should be saving now, here’s a calculator to help you.
Goodbye and Good Luck - I would like to take this opportunity to say a final thank you to everyone who’s read my articles on frugal living in RVA and urge you to please continue to practice a frugal lifestyle. Thanks!
Plus I would like to point out there are some really great local bloggers who keep up with and post all the local deals in RVA, check out their blogs to find local deals and steals:
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