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

[Anonymous]

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

Meal planning for breakfast consists of having hard boiled eggs, fruit and crackers on hand. Most mornings my kids can barely manage to eat some crackers before school. They then have lunch a couple of hours after they get to school and when they get home to school I'll often have some homemade soup or chili waiting for them Once or twice a week I'll treat them to an after school sub sandwich and then they have a light dinner.

For dh and me:

Breakfast: hard boiled eggs and/or fruit

Lunch: leftovers or a microwave meal

Dinner: meat, starch, veggie, salad.

[Anonymous]

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

I buy a lot of mine at Walmart actually - hard to beat 4 dollar shirts. I also wait until the dept stores are running sales and I have a good coupon (20% off) to pick up wardrobe staples like jeans. You can get brand new 45/50 dollar jeans for 10 or 12 bucks doing it that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are not frugal at all (at least now...). HHI is 250K.

Luxuries -
- We have house cleaners twice a week
- I am a SAHM and volunteer my time at school and church.
- DH buys lunch at work
- We eat out or get take-outs very frequently. At least a few times a week.
- We entertain a lot - big parties with food, booze, servers
- We recycle a lot, but do not wash ziplocks to reuse.
- We use bottled water for drinking.
- We buy a lot of clothes and accessories, give most office clothes to the drycleaners,
- At least two loads of laundry a day. At least two loads in the dishwasher a day
- We use a lawn care company to treat our lawn and a lawnmover company to keep our lawn mowed.
- We give generous amounts of money to many charities
- We give generous gifts to school staff and all teachers of my children during holidays
- We are the people who have huge birthday parties for our kids, all siblings and family allowed, at least one entertainer, a full meal served along with booze, goody bags for all.
- Travel abroad every year.


So, why am I posting on this thread? We have an absurdly low cost structure and can cut down on the luxuries mentioned above in an instant - and that makes us frugal and smart.

- Live, save and invest on one salary. My own salary (during the years that I worked) was never touched and 100% invested.
- Bought a huge SFH in the boonies for <300K. It was a steal then and a miracle now. We were not tempted to move to a more prestigious and more expensive area. Our friends did. They pay for it in more than one way.
- Retirement on track, a whole lot of insurance (a few million), and a pension plan.
- Kids go to magnet public schools. I do spend on enrichment and tutoring outside of school but I am guessing people in private schools do that too.
- Energy efficient and Green everything - home, cars, appliances
- No student debt for us. Fully funded college for kids. Not just for 4 years of college but for Med school, law school, masters, or MBA.
- Retirement on track, a whole lot of insurance (a few million), and a pension plan.
- Costco, Amazon, Walmart shopper
- No gym, but we trek a lot so we have expensive gear for that. And we have expensive paraphernalia and equipment for all our hobbies.
- Indexed Mutual Funds. Have always saved at least 30% of our salary...from our very first paycheck. Power of compound interest!!
- We will not pay for our kids weddings because it is a waste. Each kid will get 40K when they marry towards a down payment for a house, and 20K towards a new car when they start working. We think that is very generous helping hand in life for any child. If our kids cannot make the very best of these advantages then really there is no hope for them.

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.

This is not helpful at all. You are UMC and live in a low COL area. And you aren't frugal about anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a bi-weekly clean in service because it's cheaper than divorce. We've probably saved hundreds of thousands.

OMG this is funny

+1 This is my favorite. My spouse and I had different standards of cleanliness and after 2 years of marriage we got a cleaning service. Marital harmony skyrocketed.

[Anonymous]

This is probably frugal for DCUM standards - we often (although not always) stay in budget hotels. The no frills type with the doors that open directly onto the parking lot.

When we travel we are simply not in the room that much...so who cares.

[Anonymous]

Bought an 800k rowhouse on a 400k salary. But now I'm wondering if we made a mistake. We prefer to invest in the market and didn't want a huge mortgage. We are fine on public schools for at least ten years and have a short commute. We will have the house paid off in 12 years or less. But then I see friends' houses and get a little jealous of how nice a 2 mm house is and I know we could technically afford it.

[Anonymous]

When my husband's flip flops break, he duct tapes them. No joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bought an 800k rowhouse on a 400k salary. But now I'm wondering if we made a mistake. We prefer to invest in the market and didn't want a huge mortgage. We are fine on public schools for at least ten years and have a short commute. We will have the house paid off in 12 years or less. But then I see friends' houses and get a little jealous of how nice a 2 mm house is and I know we could technically afford it.

Eh. We bought a $800K house on a $1.1M salary. It's the worst house in the best neighborhood. We are OK with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my husband's flip flops break, he duct tapes them. No joke.

I've done that before lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When my husband's flip flops break, he duct tapes them. No joke.

I've done that before lol

When my husband was in grad school, he did that with his glasses (just for a few weeks til an intervention was held.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When my husband's flip flops break, he duct tapes them. No joke.

I've done that before lol

When my husband was in grad school, he did that with his glasses (just for a few weeks til an intervention was held.)

I've never used duct tape on my glasses but when I've lost a screw and the lens pops out I have fixed them with little sections of twisty tie.

[Anonymous]

^basically you snip off a small piece of twisty tie, trim off the excess paper on the sides, roll between your fingers and then insert the tie through the screw holes and twist it shut, tightening the frame around the lens.

It's a delicate process. But it works like a charm and it lasts for a while. Just make sure that the end of the twisty is not pointed at your eye!

[Anonymous]

We:
• Buy almost all our clothing from Unique (hands down the best thrift store I've ever been to for quality and variety)
• Clip coupons only on items we normally buy
• Have one paid off car we bought used
• Get our hair done at the Paul Mitchell School at Tysons (highly recommend)
• Use Ebates for all online purchases
• Only go out to eat on special occasions (and we usually use Groupon or Living Social or Spotluck when we do)
• Shop at Walmart and Big Lots for toiletries, cleaning products, etc and Aldi for groceries
• Use a cash back or rewards credit card for all purchases to pay for gifts and trips
• Live in <1000 SF

[Anonymous]

Rent a 2 bedroom in a good school district ($2400) in a centrally-located DC neighborhood.

No car. Take the bus or walk everywhere. Jobs are within walking distance.

20% of pre-tax income goes to Fidelity 403(b) (index funds only) and I get an employer match. Max out annual contribution in Vanguard Roth IRA via bi-monthly automated deposits.

All purchases go on my AMEX (PRG - annual fee is worth it for the perks). We have been able to avoid paying baggage fees on airlines, have received our money back on final sale items, and have used points to buy big-ticket items with this card.

Most grocery shopping is done at Target, Giant, and Trader Joe's and sometimes at local mom & pop stores. Cartwheel app is invaluable and Giant doubles coupons and often has sales on things we eat. We don't eat meat, so that in and of itself is a major savings.

Costco trips every few months to stock up on things like toilet paper, quinoa, olive oil, etc.

Make most meals and coffee at home.

Buy secondhand whenever possible (clothing, baby gear, furniture, etc.)

Exercising restraint when buying in general. Most of the time when we want something, we don't *really* need it. I've been listening to The Minimalist's podcasts for inspiration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rent a 2 bedroom in a good school district ($2400) in a centrally-located DC neighborhood.

No car. Take the bus or walk everywhere. Jobs are within walking distance.

20% of pre-tax income goes to Fidelity 403(b) (index funds only) and I get an employer match. Max out annual contribution in Vanguard Roth IRA via bi-monthly automated deposits.

All purchases go on my AMEX (PRG - annual fee is worth it for the perks). We have been able to avoid paying baggage fees on airlines, have received our money back on final sale items, and have used points to buy big-ticket items with this card.

Most grocery shopping is done at Target, Giant, and Trader Joe's and sometimes at local mom & pop stores. Cartwheel app is invaluable and Giant doubles coupons and often has sales on things we eat. We don't eat meat, so that in and of itself is a major savings.

Costco trips every few months to stock up on things like toilet paper, quinoa, olive oil, etc.

Make most meals and coffee at home.

Buy secondhand whenever possible (clothing, baby gear, furniture, etc.)

Exercising restraint when buying in general. Most of the time when we want something, we don't *really* need it. I've been listening to The Minimalist's podcasts for inspiration.

Also:

Live in <1000 sq ft and purge things we don't need (donate/sell/give to friends) on a regular basis.

Repair items instead of trashing them.