What motivates you to be frugal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:my parents were not frugal, even though they made a decent middle (and at times upper middle) income for most of their professional lives, and now have very little of an accumulated nest egg to show for it. I am an only child and feel a sense of responsibility to help them in their old age now that they are retired (luckily my mom has a good pension with cost of living adjustments).


We also went through a period when my father lost his job (after the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash) and had to cut our living standard essentially to 1/3 what it originally was. He was eventually able to find work again, but at a completely different level of compensation. Luckily, my mom's job kept us going, but we had to sell the house in the suburbs, and move to a 2 BR apt. That had a big impact on me.

So I guess my frugality is a reaction to both of those things. Having a large savings cushion is a security thing for me. Also, will always live below our means, in case one of us loses our jobs. We purchased a house affordable on one spouses income only. And even though we could afford for me to stay home with the kids, I can't see myself ever doing that, because I want to maintain the ability to support the family/myself in case of divorce/husband job loss, etc. We clip coupons, drive a ten year old car, brown bag lunch 90% of the time, don't shop high end fashions/beauty maintenance, cook at home, don't outsource housecleaning, garden services, etc. We are saving and investing 50% of our take home pay, which makes me happier than a Prada bag could ever do. But we spend on private school for the kids, and lots of kid activities and good, but not lavish vacations. Since my husband and I both didn't grow up with a lot of money (just middle class, not dcurbanmom "middle class", we already feel like we're doing better than our parents and feel quite satisfied with our quality of life. It doesn't bother me that we don't have fancy house or cars that other people in our peer group expect us to have, based on our income/professional status. HHI: 750K, equally split.

How does your household keep up two very high paying jobs, with more than one child, while outsourcing no housework? No snark. I am amazed and want to know how.

we live in a townhouse slightly less than 2000 sq ft, so fewer rooms and bathrooms to keep clean than if we lived in a big house.
we've come to accept the fact that our place while clean, is not "company' ready at a moment's notice. we're OK with this. we rarely have people over without notice anyway.
much of the exterior type maintenance and yardwork is taken care of by the HOA
we have some of our own planters, that we are responsible for, but its really low maintenance plants
our work hours are long, but fairly predictable, so we are able to plan around it for household chores, grocery shopping and meal plan for the week. laundry gets done at night.
our kids have been trained to pick up after themselves.
lastly, there's rarely any leisure time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same as a PP. Once you've been poor, you get it. I'm not talking about "grad student on a tight stipend" poor. I'm talking about walk around with painful cavities in your teeth poor. It leaves a searing imprint.

+1.

I'll never forget a good friend of mine from law school was talking to me a few months ago. I had mentioned that, depending on the costs of an unforeseen house repair, I might be scaling back our summer vacation plans. He grew up well off. He LITERALLY could not comprehend the idea of scaling back a vacation, or once money is spent in one category, you had to take it out of a different budget category. LITERALLY THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY. Meanwhile, I grew up poor and the concept of having an "aw, fuck it" attitude to finances makes me think he is crazy...especially since I have a child whose security I need to look out for.

[Anonymous]

I think it is amusing that people on this thread are saying that they don't spend money on things they don't need and then listing private school as one of the things that they DO spend money on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same as a PP. Once you've been poor, you get it. I'm not talking about "grad student on a tight stipend" poor. I'm talking about walk around with painful cavities in your teeth poor. It leaves a searing imprint.

+1.

I'll never forget a good friend of mine from law school was talking to me a few months ago. I had mentioned that, depending on the costs of an unforeseen house repair, I might be scaling back our summer vacation plans. He grew up well off. He LITERALLY could not comprehend the idea of scaling back a vacation, or once money is spent in one category, you had to take it out of a different budget category. LITERALLY THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY. Meanwhile, I grew up poor and the concept of having an "aw, fuck it" attitude to finances makes me think he is crazy...especially since I have a child whose security I need to look out for.

I wouldn't scale back a vacation under ethos circumstances either.

[Anonymous]

those

[Anonymous]

I grew up poor with a divorced working Mom (I was a latchkey kid), while DH had plenty of money. But, we see eye-to-eye on what's reasonable and what's wasteful, so we rarely argue about spending.

I am frugal with children's clothes - I love hand-me-downs and I pack away older one's things for younger one. We eat at home a lot for both cost savings and family time. I'd much rather hit up Craigslist or Goodwill than buy retail for household, furniture, sports eqt. etc- not least for the challenge of it! I've redone small pieces of furniture myself. We attempt to fix things ourselves before calling in pros.

But I splurge on travel, both to see parents and extended family who all live away, and on family vacations. DH has many electronic toys - Sonos speakers, plasma TV.

[Anonymous]

For me it's retirement. I want to be able to travel and really relax, and not be worried about money. I try not to get too crazy frugal, since I know we're not guaranteed 30 years together in retirement. So we take vacations, etc., but modest ones, and we try to keep an eye on the future.

Seeing my parents enjoy their retirement is a great motivator.

[Anonymous]

I dont have extra money to spend. We have a nice income, almost $200k. But we pay $4400 a month in tuition and childcare so every extra dollar counts. Even $20 a week for pizza adds up.

[Anonymous]

I was a child of divorce and also attended a Presbyterian Church in the SF Bay Area as a kid. The message I got from all of those circumstances is not to spend a lot of money on stuff. I don't think I'm that frugal, but I don't own a car, live in a condo, cook a lot, get my hair cut at Supercuts, cut the kid's hair myself etc. I also like to travel, so I want to save money for that.

I do find, however, that there is a definite tradeoff between price and quality for some items, and that finding the sweet spot on that continuum isn't always obvious. You obviously don't want to skimp on dental care, and it's okay to go low end on toilet paper. For other categories (dishwashers, canned food), it isn't obvious which is the best choice without some research, which takes time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same as a PP. Once you've been poor, you get it. I'm not talking about "grad student on a tight stipend" poor. I'm talking about walk around with painful cavities in your teeth poor. It leaves a searing imprint.

+1.

I'll never forget a good friend of mine from law school was talking to me a few months ago. I had mentioned that, depending on the costs of an unforeseen house repair, I might be scaling back our summer vacation plans. He grew up well off. He LITERALLY could not comprehend the idea of scaling back a vacation, or once money is spent in one category, you had to take it out of a different budget category. LITERALLY THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY. Meanwhile, I grew up poor and the concept of having an "aw, fuck it" attitude to finances makes me think he is crazy...especially since I have a child whose security I need to look out for.

I wouldn't scale back a vacation under ethos circumstances either.

Where would the money come from though? Just put it on credit? Withdraw from savings? Stop saving for retirement? I do a zero based budget....the money has to come from somewhere.

[Anonymous]

What's zero based budget?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same as a PP. Once you've been poor, you get it. I'm not talking about "grad student on a tight stipend" poor. I'm talking about walk around with painful cavities in your teeth poor. It leaves a searing imprint.

+1.

I'll never forget a good friend of mine from law school was talking to me a few months ago. I had mentioned that, depending on the costs of an unforeseen house repair, I might be scaling back our summer vacation plans. He grew up well off. He LITERALLY could not comprehend the idea of scaling back a vacation, or once money is spent in one category, you had to take it out of a different budget category. LITERALLY THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY. Meanwhile, I grew up poor and the concept of having an "aw, fuck it" attitude to finances makes me think he is crazy...especially since I have a child whose security I need to look out for.

I wouldn't scale back a vacation under ethos circumstances either.

Where would the money come from though? Just put it on credit? Withdraw from savings? Stop saving for retirement? I do a zero based budget....the money has to come from somewhere.

I don't use a budget. I would just scale back on other things. But I would never scale back vacations. They are untouchable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What motivates me is the feeling I get when I spend money, I feel awful, sometimes sick to my stomach. When I save money and see my savings account balances I get happy and feel secure.

I also get very anxious after spending money. Sometimes I will even return what I purchased. I don't really know why I am like this.

I do this, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:my parents were not frugal, even though they made a decent middle (and at times upper middle) income for most of their professional lives, and now have very little of an accumulated nest egg to show for it. I am an only child and feel a sense of responsibility to help them in their old age now that they are retired (luckily my mom has a good pension with cost of living adjustments).


We also went through a period when my father lost his job (after the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash) and had to cut our living standard essentially to 1/3 what it originally was. He was eventually able to find work again, but at a completely different level of compensation. Luckily, my mom's job kept us going, but we had to sell the house in the suburbs, and move to a 2 BR apt. That had a big impact on me.

So I guess my frugality is a reaction to both of those things. Having a large savings cushion is a security thing for me. Also, will always live below our means, in case one of us loses our jobs. We purchased a house affordable on one spouses income only. And even though we could afford for me to stay home with the kids, I can't see myself ever doing that, because I want to maintain the ability to support the family/myself in case of divorce/husband job loss, etc. We clip coupons, drive a ten year old car, brown bag lunch 90% of the time, don't shop high end fashions/beauty maintenance, cook at home, don't outsource housecleaning, garden services, etc. We are saving and investing 50% of our take home pay, which makes me happier than a Prada bag could ever do. But we spend on private school for the kids, and lots of kid activities and good, but not lavish vacations. Since my husband and I both didn't grow up with a lot of money (just middle class, not dcurbanmom "middle class", we already feel like we're doing better than our parents and feel quite satisfied with our quality of life. It doesn't bother me that we don't have fancy house or cars that other people in our peer group expect us to have, based on our income/professional status. HHI: 750K, equally split.

How does your household keep up two very high paying jobs, with more than one child, while outsourcing no housework? No snark. I am amazed and want to know how.

we live in a townhouse slightly less than 2000 sq ft, so fewer rooms and bathrooms to keep clean than if we lived in a big house.
we've come to accept the fact that our place while clean, is not "company' ready at a moment's notice. we're OK with this. we rarely have people over without notice anyway.
much of the exterior type maintenance and yardwork is taken care of by the HOA
we have some of our own planters, that we are responsible for, but its really low maintenance plants
our work hours are long, but fairly predictable, so we are able to plan around it for household chores, grocery shopping and meal plan for the week. laundry gets done at night.
our kids have been trained to pick up after themselves.
lastly, there's rarely any leisure time.

So you spend Friday and Saturday nights doing chores instead of socializing? I wouldn't work as hard as you must, make as much money and not ever really kick back and enjoy it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same as a PP. Once you've been poor, you get it. I'm not talking about "grad student on a tight stipend" poor. I'm talking about walk around with painful cavities in your teeth poor. It leaves a searing imprint.

+1.

I'll never forget a good friend of mine from law school was talking to me a few months ago. I had mentioned that, depending on the costs of an unforeseen house repair, I might be scaling back our summer vacation plans. He grew up well off. He LITERALLY could not comprehend the idea of scaling back a vacation, or once money is spent in one category, you had to take it out of a different budget category. LITERALLY THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY. Meanwhile, I grew up poor and the concept of having an "aw, fuck it" attitude to finances makes me think he is crazy...especially since I have a child whose security I need to look out for.

I wouldn't scale back a vacation under ethos circumstances either.

Where would the money come from though? Just put it on credit? Withdraw from savings? Stop saving for retirement? I do a zero based budget....the money has to come from somewhere.

Save less that month.