What is the most frugal (or cheap) thing you do to save money?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Make over 400k but:

1. One car
2. Bring lunch to work
3. Make coffee at home
4. Take the bus
5. Cook often at home
6. Groom our own dog
7. Clean our own house

Dontnthink this list is frugal or cheap. We make a bit more than yiu andnit has never even occurred to me to pay someone to wash our dog and clip her nails. Taking the bus seems frugal though, but all other things are pretty normal.

Sadly I think they aren't that common. Always every couple we know at our income level sends their dog to the groomer and has a cleaning lady. They also buy their lunch at work.

How in the world do people know what their friends income level is? I've never divulged my income level to my friends, nor have I asked or been told what income level my friends are at. It is just not a topic that we sit around and talk about.

Just got our w2s and i brought in 293K and DH 164k. We live in the same house for 10 years, we drive japanese cars, mine is 9yrs old, and I've never had someonw groom our dog. I bring my lunch to work to keep my weight down and save time. I cannot imagine how someone could guess or know what we make.

It's pretty easy to guess.

How? Tell, me how would you guess? For example, this is my family: we live in a row house in Shaw worth about $900k. I work as a director of public relations for a large well known non-profit. My spouse is a journalist. We have two kids age 7 and 9 who go to charter schools in DC. We have one car, a Honda CRV which we bought new three years ago. We go on a lot of vacations and eat out regularly. What's our income?

Around 280k.

That being said I'm not familiar with your industries. For some of my friends I roughly know what their jobs pay. There is no way they are earning more ban 400k. I also know they live in 1.5 million dollar homes, have car payments, cleaning service, vacations etc. I know they are spending all of their money and possibly getting money from family.

Ill ask the oracle this. How much is my HHI? DH sales, me controller. Both IT. Live in Reston, work in Reston. House worth about 800k, public schools, 10 & 7yr old cars, one nice vacation a year. We have an AuPair.

Hard to tell with a sales job.

You should know my pay if yiu are so wise. I'm a controller.

[Anonymous]

Controller or Corporate Controller? big diff

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Wow this is awesome. Twenty-something here. You sound a lot like my parents down to the 40k at marriage and entertaining around the clock on what dcum would consider a modest salary. I aspire to model my own life the same way! Thanks for posting.

Good luck! Entertaining round the clock happens relatively inexpensively because I have the infrastructure and experience to cook large amount of food at home, and can easily serve food for 50-70 people at a time. I buy booze and raw ingredients from Costco and other food warehouses. We have lived all our lives on one salary, and saved and invested 30% of it. When we had two salaries, one salary was 100% invested. At the very minimum we have always saved enough to get the maximum company match.

At one time we were in debt and were able to come out of it within one year. We had to cut down on the %age we were saving, but we did not stop saving. Since we are immigrants, we had to build up our credit history from zero. Always live on 70% of your salary and invest 30% for retirement. If you want to save for your kids college or a house, save for that from the 70% that you live on and do not touch your retirement savings.

Remember that 100 K is a very large annual HHI. Your mortgage payment should not become a financial cross for you to bear. If you have student debt, eat ramen noodles but pay it off in a year or two. If you need to stay with your parents for a few years to not take the student debt in the first place or save for the down payment of a house - do that. If you need to carpool or take public transport - do that. Nix that Starbucks habit.

I do not believe in being a mooch or being miserly. I take pride in being an attentive and generous host. I take pride in the fact that our household is run so well that we can accommodate guests and have people over. I appreciate the people who are supporting us to make life easier for us. I like the fact that we have flexibility and leisure time for our family, friends, causes, hobbies etc. All this came from having financial freedom, and that happened because we made some very good decisions about living within our means, saving for our retirement, paying off debt ASAP, having a low cost structure. Frugality is not being miserly. It is not dumpster diving or not using more than one small scrap of toilet paper. Live well but live way below your means. Be generous to others.

[Anonymous]

I didn't read through this entire thread, so this may already be on here. I love to read cheesy mindless romance novels, and to cut down on the expense of downloading books to iBooks or my Amazon Kindle app, I troll the free books available on both apps and signed up for a daily deal email through Goodreads.com. Goodreads sends me a daily email of book specials with many decent books starting at $.99 each. Its not as cheap as the library, but much better than paying full price!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn't read through this entire thread, so this may already be on here. I love to read cheesy mindless romance novels, and to cut down on the expense of downloading books to iBooks or my Amazon Kindle app, I troll the free books available on both apps and signed up for a daily deal email through Goodreads.com. Goodreads sends me a daily email of book specials with many decent books starting at $.99 each. Its not as cheap as the library, but much better than paying full price!

why don't you download ebooks from the library?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Clean our own house.
Do our cosmetic upgrades - ikea cabinets, backsplash.
DH does most of the repairs and maintenance in the house.
DH cuts his own hair.
Take our lunch to work.
Iron our own shirts.
Use dryel for dryclean-only sweaters and blouses.
Save actual dry-cleaning for suits and slacks.
Wear things multiple times before dry-cleaning and spot-clean when that's enough.
Travel mostly on airline and hotel points.
Brew coffee at home.
Use one teabag throughout the day.
Download movies for free.
No dogs.
No kids.

If these are choices - no dogs and no kids - solely to save money, I find this incredibly sad.

No, it's more to save the world from overpopulation (the kids). The no dogs one is just because DH and I like to live spontaneously.

[Anonymous]

What I haven't seen written here is that I can cut down on entertainment expenses - not paying for movies on demand, changing Netflix subscription, etc. there is so much to do for free in the DC area.

I love to travel but I have been enjoying staycations lately too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Controller or Corporate Controller? big diff

Controller in small biz, under 100 employees. Not publicly traded. Obviously.

[Anonymous]

Make about $100k:

1. Getting a roommate
2. Set the HVAC system on timed schedule to shut off when i am not home
3. Shop at discount stores like Marshalls and Ross.
4. Try to pack my own lunch or either go somewhere inexpensive like Chiptole
5. Paid off bills other than mortgage
6. Purchased a cheaper house

[Anonymous]

Frugality is not being miserly. It is not dumpster diving or not using more than one small scrap of toilet paper. Live well but live way below your means.

FINALLY ! Someone with common sense. Let's be friends.

[Anonymous]

I:

Shop at thrift stores (for nearly all the kids' clothing)

Take home extra plastic forks to use in the kids' lunches

Turn shampoo bottles upside down to get the last amount out

Drive to a slightly further away grocery store because it is cheaper

Never: go to Starbucks, buy books at a book store, pay for anything to download on my Kindle (all library loans)

Rarely: go to a full price movie (maybe 1x/every two years), get food at a movie theater (but will sometimes do so if it is a discounted movie theater), get takeout (maybe 1x/month)

Before people jump all over me that I'm so cheap that I don't enjoy life: I have a new really nice car, spend quite a bit on vacations, have a few vacation homes (one on the ocean, one on a lake, one in the mountains) and like to spend money more on experiences (seeing things, traveling, etc.)

[Anonymous]

I do not enjoy restaurant meals. So I rarely go.

[Anonymous]

meal plan for the week, pack lunches, bring coffee from home, cloth diaper my kids when they aren't in day care, live in a small house (2 BRs for 4 people), and own paid off cars. Feels like we are in the minority among other working parents we know.

[Anonymous]

For those who meal plan, do you also plan out breakfast or it's normally the same breakfast daily?

[Anonymous]

I buy almost all of my clothes at the Goodwill or used.