If you came here from the Associated Press article entitled either Extreme Cheapskates: Tightwads Revel in Frugality or Make your own detergent? Tightwads embrace frugality to new extremes in recession, welcome! If you tried to get here yesterday, I know you couldn’t. My site crashed under the heavy traffic, and I apologize for that. The situation is fixed, and it shouldn’t happen again.
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
lol I like that you knew I was coming!
Figured the AP article may have crashed your site – glad you’re up and running today!
Cat’s last blog post..Other Signs That I Should Seek Medical Attention
Oh am I glad you are up and running today. I couldn’t wait to look and see what goodies you have on your site.
Going to have a look around now… thanks for putting out all this info for everyone to see.
Casey’s last blog post..Budgeting 101
Thank goodness Being Frugal is back online. Withdrawal is a terrible thing. Glad you’re back, and have a wonderful time in the Lone Star State!
Angelsong’s last blog post..Kitchen Magic
Howdy there,
I saw the article and wanted to introduce myself as maybe one of the biggest misers of all. My wife and I live in uber-overpriced Northern California. I’m originally from North Carolina, thus moving here was sort of a shock in regards to the $600,000 “starter” homes and so on. Thus we both are pretty frugal.
Here’s some of what we do. Perhaps it’ll help a few others like us:
1: We rent. Actually, we share a house with another house mate. Rent is still 1/3rd to even 1/4th the cost of buying even now. We plan on buying someday, but not at these prices. In the meantime, we save.
2: We drive crappy old cars. I taught myself auto mechanics, bought the books and tools over the years and keep them running myself. Both have over 200,000 miles but run great. I most recently changed the clutch in one of them. My cost: $300. Dealer cost: $1,200. I keep them in tip-top condition so they will last as long as possible. As long as we’re in Cali, these cars are just beater commuter cars.
3: Anything that is usable on the street is either made into household items or re-sold on craigslist. For awhile I found lots of push mowers on the side of the road, fixed them, and re-sold them for $50-$100 each. Nice pocket money. I’ve sold tons of “junk” on craigslist. Other items that got turned into household items are: Teak coffee table, rug, three dressers, several lamps, TV, stereo system, and so on. Very little of what we “own” was bought new.
4: Flea markets and Thrift stores are great. Most of the kitchen appliances, our shoes, clothes, and other accessories were found at these places. I look for older appliances since new ones are junk and not made to last for more than a few years. Most of the kitchen appliances are around 30+ years old and much better quality than even the nicest new stuff.
5:Eat in, take your lunch, no coffee at starbucks. That should be obvious
6: we carpool. We only use one car and work close together. That saves gas and the $4 a day bridge toll.
7: Make your own beer and wine. It actually isn’t that hard to do, it is rewarding, and making craft brew results in beer that is often much nicer than store bought stuff. It costs pennies on the dollar to do so.
8: Get movies from the library. They’re free.
9: get books from there too. Free also.
That’s all I can think of for now. I’d say we save 60% of our income. The plan is to buy a house for cash, have retirement taken care of, and basically have no debt. We’re pretty close to that achievement already.
I think it’s wonderful, whenever people can save 60 percent of their income. My mother used to quote Ben Franklin’s saying, “A penny saved is a penny earned. (Of course, a penny in Ben’s day might have been worth a dollar, in today’s money.)
I read in the book “The Millionaire Next Door” that such a man is very thrifty, but his wife is even thriftier than he is.
Jerry Baker’s last blog post..A link to “being frugal.”
Your 168 Frugal Tips to Make Your Dollar Stretch post is my favorite of all your posts! Well worth the read and even a re-read!
DDFD at DivorcedDadFrugalDad.com’s last blog post..Affluenza: What is It and Have You Been Inoculated?
Thanks for the great information and for being a positive role model. They call it “frugality”, but based my own values, it looks like choosing consciously or spending responsibly.
What I see in your personal example is a choice to spend your precious life-energy (earnings/income)on things you really need and value, i.e., on things that actually support your health and well-being, vs., compulsively consuming things designed to fail you, that weaken the integrity of your body and destroy our earth-home, and that promise to boost your status and image–in a society that seems to encourage greed, lust, material idolotry, violence, dependency and deceit, and distraction from all that is of true value, that is, fundamental to our general well-being as humans.
It took the current state of our economy to finally motivate me to start living more responsibly. Three months ago I withdrew from TV and conventional news sources, and later, bought my first stash of borax, vinegar, baking soda, and peroxide to make my cleaning products. I will gradually make other changes toward eventually freeing myself from the insidious grips of complicity and capitalism-gone-wild.
I’m rooting for all of you who have any inclinations to join this social revolution.
Boy, I can’t wait to see the backlash from my view on this. I am all for being frugal. In fact, I have always felt that most people born in the U.S. are wasteful. But here lies the problem…When people like the lady in this article start cutting back an extra 25% of their income out of FEAR and nothing but FEAR, they are causing the problem. Their reaction of not spending what they normally did is the reason their neighbor lost his job. Then the houses start foreclosing around them…why? Well if you suck out tons of money that is normally flowing freely, people lose jobs. The majority of what causes our market conditions is how we feel. If we are worried the market sags, If we are confident, it soars, but when we are scared, we get what we have here. I don’t like it any more than you folks so. So what I am saying is not that you should not be frugal, but if you still have a good job but are simply afraid, you are not helping the situation by drastically changing your spending habits during all of this. If we want to ever come out of this and get our 401k plans back where they should be, we need to spend some money…not stick it under the mattress. Buy Now…Buy American…We have to make it through this people…If we just sit on our money, more people lose their jobs, and more homes are foreclosed on. If your home value falls by $100,000, and you save an extra $8,000, who wins? Remember, the only difference in a Recession and a Depression is whether or not you lose your job.
Bill,
For one I’ve always been frugal and so has my wife who came from an equally frugal family. The economy was doing great despite this and if we suddenly started throwing money around, we wouldn’t make a difference either. The financial problems of the US are from decades of outright reckless spending habits and over-inflation. Like I mentioned, we live in Northern California and the fact that houses got to be 600k+ at the height of the boom was outright atrocious. I knew many people who bought anyway and are now either stuck against the wall or going bankrupt. They made a decision. It isn’t my responsibility to spend them out of their mistakes. If you think I sound a tad smug, then you’re correct because I watched this lunacy unfold for years. That form of inflation is destructive and corrosive to communities where the overall quality of life is lowered in the process. One of the biggest reasons my wife and I are so frugal is as a defensive measure and also because I knew full well that this stuff was going to hit the fan and by having savings, it would out us in a financially advantageous in the aftermath.
The bottom line is that in order for we as a nation to return to an overall long-term healthy economy and society, people, companies, and yes- the government are going to have to get their spending under control, things like houses, cars, and other consumer goods are going to have to suffer a decline in values to accurately match real incomes, and therefor return a level of stability to the us consumer.
Here goes. Stop the recreational use of food. Eat for nourishment and not gratification so you can stop watching a third of your income go down the toilet. I am textbook height-and-weight-appropriate and have been for 50 years.
I buy very little toilet paper – stopped using it. I have a plastic squeeze bottle with a bent nozzle to wash it all away. Squeaky clean I dry with a wash rag and toss it in the dirty clothes. It costs nothing to wash extra wash cloths.
I turned off the electric water heater, they say it uses $20-$40 per month. I can turn it on once a week for a shower. In the interim I can keep clean by heating my plastic nozzle bottle in the microwave and using it on my body, heating water on the stove for small amounts of dishes and using the water heater in the dishwasher for large loads when necessary and, of course, washing clothes on the cold water cycle. When the Texas heat sets in and one must shower more, the water heater will not be required to power-on so often.
Being Frugal is being responsible. Frugality is not the cause of the economic crash. Actually it is the opposite. An economy based on spending will always crash in the long term. People cannot constantly consume.
Every generation has wanted more for their children. Better housing, better cars, better everything. Instead of teaching our children to take care of themselves, we (as a society) have taught them to make more money and work harder to buy more stuff.
Being Frugal, eating healthier, and reducing chemical usage should will be the norm not the exception.
I admire the frugality of the Amish. It is, with them, an old-fashioned virtue.
At the same time, today’s Amish aren’t opposed to all modern technology. Many of them have modern windmills to generate electricity, and others use solar cells.
Jerry Baker’s last blog post..A link to "being frugal."
I have been a frugal person all my life. DH and I decided that I would stay home with the kids when we got preg with #1 DS 11 years ago. Thus was a new chapter of frugality. Then I got the best book of my life…The Complete Tightwad Gazette. My friends and family laughed at some of the stuff I started years ago and now I am in fashion.
The closet has boxes for both boys to grow into from cousins hand-me-down, garage sales and thrift stores. When we need new clothes or shoes…we shop the closet! DH drives a car that gets 43 MPG, it is 9 years old and has 300,000+ miles on it. We have never had a new car or close to it and he and the boys do all routine maintenance on them. I cook from scratch, DH and both boys take packed lunches in reusable containers. We have a zero emission wood burning stove for heat and have always cut our own firewood. Every article I read that tells you what you should have in your pantry and in bulk…got it! I am so glad to find that being frugal is the new “IN” and I may take the next step and try my making my own laundry soap…Thanks for the idea. Keep up the good work!
Wow! I love how the comments on your post have turned into a discussion about economy and politics! It makes me feel safer that we are all talking about it. Discourse is good for all of us.
Like many people commenting here, I found your blog from the recent article and am always happy to see more people who think like me. I have a blog about living in style on a budget, from the POV of an actor/singer who has always had to hob-knob with Who’s Who in NYC and/or Hollywood but who doesn’t always make the big bucks. It’s called whatwouldleenyado.blogspot.net.
For what it’s worth, my thoughts about the recent economic downturn are this: We shouldn’t feel guilty for being frugal. America hasn’t always had an economy that was based on oil and product consumption. There was even a time it was based on slavery and tobacco and rum trading and thank God, we eventually, slowly changed. Change is possible, especially if we are all willing to dive into what we’re afraid of.
And let’s face it: Less consumption, and responsible consumption, is probably a Hell of a lot better for the environment as well.
My two cents (and that’s still a bargain!)
Leenya Rideout’s last blog post..Extreme Cheapskates
Well this is my first time here, and I am here because I live sort-of frugally (I think “sort-of”, my husband thinks “too much”) and am interested in other peoples’ ideas. I hope to share mine as well.
Randy’s ideas for cleaning products (using borax/vinegar/bakingsoda/peroxide)are right on target.These products are so in-expensive to buy, and in their pure forms are superior to supermarket products…
I have to break with Jake’s frugality on the toilet-paper expenditure. Yes, he accommplishes cleanliness with the water bottle. And this is not a new idea. When in Italy, be prepared for the bidet, no toilet paper. But here in the USA…and you can get a bundle of 12 double-rolls on sale for six bucks and there is always a coupon for this as well…I tell you I would be a little freaked-out as a date or as a guest finding Jerry’s bathroom absent of t-tissue.
SherriBlue
Greetings All:
I was really a great AP article. I also enjoy reading all of the stories here. I like many people was a wasteful person. I am in Real Estate in Florida. Up until 2007 I was the broker for a small real estate company owned by a family member. Lets just say when things started getting slow, I was no longer his broker. He closed the business and moved out of state. I did have some savings but went through that quickly. All the while looking for some type of job, I have many talents and have had many types of jobs. This time there where none, I started my own Real Estate Brokerage. Still not enough, so I became a handyman! Over the years I saved stuff, like my spouse likes to say I am a pack rat. I always said someday I am going to need that. Well now that I am a handyman a lot of the stuff I save has been put to use. I do a lot of work on rental units and the owners do not always have a lot of cash. So if I have something that still works well and still looks good they are happy to get a discount on the items. Like ceiling fans, lights, faucets and things like that. I also recycle most of my waste material; I save the hardware like screws, nails and wood. I save every scrap and most of the time I use most of it somewhere. Like last week my mom needed some worn out draws in here kitchen repaired. I used all scrapes and made all new draws with the exception of the fronts. It cost me some time but no money and my mother was absolutely thrilled to have new drawers that really work correctly. On my jobs I always carry a bucket of all kinds of odds and ends, having a engineering background I sometimes have to be creative, the other day I had a loose ceiling fan to deal with, there was no way to get up into the attic to brace up the fan electrical box. While it was securely fastened to the truss it was wobbling from side to side. I reached into my bucket and found a bracket that I could rework into a brace. There was just enough room next to the box and the next nearest truss, so I drill a hole in the electrical box for one side of the brace (used recycled screws) and screwed the other side up into the other truss. Problem solved no longer wobble and solid! The point I am getting at like others here if you have the space to save stuff some times it is worth it.
When I lost my job my income went down about 2/3rds. So another thing I do is bring a bag lunch, and I just started reusing the baggies if they are still clean. We also recycle about 2/3rds of our household waste. It feels goods to know I am doing my part. I just wish others would also pull there fare share. Another thing we are trying to do is not use the A/C if we can help it. Ceiling fans at medium speed use about half the electricity as the A/C unit. I will not due without hot water though I draw the line there, after a hard day at work I need that shower. And my family appreciates it to! I also check out thrift shops for work cloths and save a ton of money to. Sometimes I find other items I can use on the job. While I hope the Real Estate market stabilizes, I do agree a LOT of people got greedy and it hurt a lot of others now. But my hope is that it just goes back to the normal 3 to 5% growth every five years or so. This crazy appreciation in value in just months was crazy. Just before the BIG fall I refinanced my mortgage from an ARM to a fixed rate. My mortgage broker said you can pull about 60K or 70K out and invest it. I said thanks but no thanks I want a fixed rate for the amount I owed at that time. I AM SO GLAD I DID THAT NOW! While I did loose equity on paper my home value adjusted to just where it would be under normal times. I am saving again, but I do spend money just not a frivolously as I used to. I think about things before I purchase like do I really need that tool now or could I make out OK with my old one that still works fine. We are also keeping our vehicles longer then we used to (new car every other year) mine is now in its 4th year and my spouses is in her 6th year. While I am handy sometimes $17.95 (Texaco Jiffylube) for an oil change is still worth it, you do not have to worry about how to dispose of the old oil and filter and it helps the local business.
Thanks for everything! I will be back to find other ways to save. Here is to frugality!
Randy says he withdrew from TV and conventional news. Randy, that may assuage your mind and your daily reality re: the state of things in this day and age, which have been VERY stressful. But to retreat doesn’t help your nation. You are obviously an intelligent individual and I hope that you will draw on your strength and intellect and confront the problems we are all now dealing with. You want to free yourself from “capitalism gone wild”. Yes some capitalists have lately been on the news for their greed. But remember that it is the capitalists who employe people like you and me, provide livings for us, and it is they who pay the majority of the taxes in this country to keep the social programs going.
SherriBlue