Aside from looking in the subreddit for ideas, I'm looking to actively see what I can do to boost my frugality to continue increasing margin at the end of the month. There's lots of times I haven't thought of something that otherwise is absolutely brilliant. What I do now is listed below:
– Brew my own coffee at home on a Keurig
– Batch cook chicken breasts or thighs to get 3-4 days worth of food I can just pop in the microwave
– Use cold water always when washing clothes for electricity cost
– Purchase groceries and other necessities (only if on sale) at a wholesale club to have a months supply
– Use a filter pitcher for tap water to save on bottled water
– Shop thrift stores when in need of clothes (like t-shirts at Goodwill)
– Only do so if I have coupons if I occasionally want to (keyword is occasionally) get Subway or the like
– Reduce meals to protein rich ones once a day, with multivitamins to supplement. Aside from health benefits, this reduces grocery bills quite heavily
– Take the bare minimum in benefits at work to keep more of the gross paycheck as much as possible
– Try to take advantage of the free section of Craigslist or FB Marketplace
What can I add to being frugal that I have not already done, or thought of?
byu/Agile_Kick_6626 inFrugal
Posted by Agile_Kick_6626
37 Comments
Learn to fix/repair everything.
Skip the keurig unless you have a refillable one. Those individual cups are a ripoff and bad for the environment to boot.
For the sake of a well rounded diet, maybe go up to 2 meals and healthy cheap snacks you make yourself like roasted chickpeas or some yogurt.
Solid list, man. You’re already crushing the basics like batch cooking and thrift hunting. Here’s a few tweaks I’ve added that bumped our margin $100-150/mo without feeling like more “work”:
Indoor Garden: $10 seed kit and old windowsill gives you a free add-ons to every meal. We grow cilantro and basil.
Credit card rewards: Link your cards to Rakuten or Ibotta for cashback on what you already buy (groceries, gas).
Library for everything non-edible: Books, tools, even ukuleles. Borrowed a power drill for a shelf build, saved $50 rental.
No-spend challenges with a twist: One weekend/mo, challenge yourself to “remix” closet stuff into new outfits. Zero cost, feels fun, and delays buying clothes forever.
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Dont skimp on benefits, thats not smart.
You absolutely need more than one protein source a day. It’s not worth the cost you’re saving now to have doctor bills later. You will end up deficient.
Off peak hours – see if your utility company dues that.
Ditch the Keurig switch to pour over/French press/moka pot.
I wait a day after putting something in my Amazon cart before checking out. 80% of the time I realize I don’t really need.
The mod team shot me down so ill say it this way. Self-hosting your life on a miniPC (my personal favorite is the lenovo M920Q) cut all streaming services and subscriptions and with Docker-compose its never been easier, no long pay for Icloud/google drive/Netflix/peacock/hbo max. a mini PC like the m920q draws 100w if you have a GPU installed so if you assume around 16.25 cents / KWH (where im at in IL) it costs less than 150 to run that server at 100% usage 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
Dump the Keurig. You’re spending more that you need to, the coffee isn’t great (imo), and the pods are bad for the environment.
Don’t sacrifice protein. It’s one of the most important macros that you eat. It won’t be good for you in the long term. Most people don’t eat enough protein, and you need more protein as you get older. It’s not worth being frugal about anything health related. Health is an investment in you.
Take care of your bod. Make sure you get some weight training in and cardio in on a regular basis each week. Strength will help keep your bones and muscles strong and reduce back/joint/chronic pain problems as you age, and cardio will keep your heart, brain, and lungs in good shape to reduce odds of a heart attack, stroke, hardened arteries, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Medical costs (in the US) are so expensive, so avoiding them is key. Go running in a park, pick up some cheap weights at good will, or just do body weight exercises off youtube. It really does wonders.
Grind your coffee beans with a manual ceramic burr grinder. Brew your own coffee in a french press. So no more Keurig overprice coffee and no more kurig cup waste. Also no need for electricity with those, no risk of it breaking down over time. It’s often a purchase for life.
This is a good list, and it sounds like you are doing well on spending your money wisely.
However, I would caution you to not get sucked into the mindset of “spending money is bad”. The goal is to be secure, limit waste, and focus on the things you value/enjoy.
To that end, if you haven’t apart, you should put together a long term financial plan and see if you need to make any changes to make that a reality. This means writing down what it is you want to do, calculating how much it costs to do that, and how much you’d need to save now to make that happen.
No amorphous or vague answers allowed. Retirement isn’t a money pit, estimate how much you’d need to maintain your desired lifestyle and if you are under you can adjust lifestyle or make more money, but if you are over saving then you need to think of other ways to spend that money. Having money that you refuse to spend is the same as not having money. Maybe you want to travel, donate to causes you value, or explore a hobby, or even just save up for a future car repair bill or emergency fund. Allocate all your savings to specific things that are important to you.
What cleaning products are you using? If you aren’t making 90% of your own household cleaners with some combination of any of: dish soap, isopropyl alcohol, baking soda, citric acid, oil (for wood), and vinegar you are probably spending way more than you need to on them. Clean My Space has some great recipes for these things.
Learn to cook some bean/pea/lentil recipes you love.
(Are you saying you only eat one meal a day or that only one meal has a protein focus?)
Cosign all the keurig-bashing.
Taking the bare minimum in benefits would be a mistake for a lot of people, but is very dependent on you. If you don’t have a lot of healthcare needs though, good for you!
Don’t underestimate the value of other people and social support as a resource, and that sometimes it is helpful to bend to make that resource available to us, eg, it’s frugal to friend-from-home, it’s frupid to avoid hosting because sharing food costs more than isolation.
Check your subscriptions. Make sure you are paying only for what you use. When it comes to streaming services, bundle or pick only a few and rotate. Call your Internet/phone provider and see if you can get a lower rate. Look around for different car insurance options.
These are the ones that given and have given me the biggest savings:
Check your bills. Do you pay for the right things? Do you pay the right amount? Are there subscriptions you forgot about?
Whenever you think you need to buy something, consider if you can do without the thing.
Also, consider if you can use something you already have for it.
Learn to fix things. Home appliances, car, mending your clothes, home repair.
As well as cleaning things you thought were gone so they can be used again.
Learn hobby/craft/tech skills that allows you to make things yourself. It can be a slippery slope to buying way too many materials and tools.
But if you keep yourself in check it can be a great way to enjoy your free time, to bond with other people, and you can make presents for people in your life.
Entertaintment. Find free events, go hiking, cook with friends, volunteer for something you enjoy, etc.
Take good care of your teeth. Exercise. Don’t eat too much. Don’t smoke. Only drink little alcohol.
Do you really need a car?
As many have pointed out, skimping protein can cause even more (MAJOR) problems down the line. See about getting vegetable proteins (legumes, peas, nuts, beans, lentils, soy/edamame), dairy, and/or eggs. If you cannot afford any of these items seek out food pantries, charities, etc.
Make your own cleaning products and move to rags/cloth napkins?
Rather than chicken thighs and breasts, buy whole chickens (stock up when they go on sale) and part them out yourself. Bag up breasts, drums, thighs and wings separately and then use the carcasses for making casseroles followed by stocks. Way cheaper than buying breasts and thighs separately and gives you way more uses.
– save veggie scraps in a bag in the freezer. Make into stocks/soups.
– don’t skimp on protein, but do explore more alternative protein sources (aka beans and lentils). Dried are also much cheaper. Just get into the habit of soaking beans overnight once a week, then the next day drain and rinse and cook them up for the week. Besides being cheaper protein sources,beans are also a good source of fiber which most people don’t get enough of.
-only buy meat when it’s on markdown.
-learn to cut your own hair
– only have one subscription service at a time and rotate between them every 2-3 months.
-make sure stocking up on stuff in bulk from warehouse stores is actually cheaper. There are few things I actually find cheaper at warehouse stores, except for non-essentials like snacks and junk food, and I’m way more likely to overspend on crap I don’t need (especially snacks and junk food that we don’t often buy because they’re expensive, but now that they’re cheaper per 100g we’ve stocked up and eaten what we would otherwise spend on 6 months worth of junk food in 2 weeks)
To level up your chicken, try cooking a whole chicken either as one or butcher it yourself. Then use the carcass to make your own stock. I do this about 3 times a month and get 3-4 quarts of stock each time.
With your Keurig, use the refillable cups so you don’t have to buy their expensive ones. I grind my beans and make my own lattes every morning. I haven’t purchased a latte for a very long time.
Regarding benefits. Putting money in a tax deductible account is almost painless. I had a friend literally fill out the paper work and tell me to sign it. I did to get her off my back. I figured I could always cancel it. A small amount is almost painless because you pay less in taxes. I got so every raise I would either split it or put it all in my 403B deductions. In no time I was maxing it out and still able to live in a HCOL area.
Be sure you are covered if something untoward happens. The other thing I spent money on was disability insurance. I was a single working mom living paycheck to paycheck. My ex had taken off. It was up to me to pay the bills for my children and me. I could not afford an extended illness. My employer purchased a small amount, but it was about $200/mo in payments. I bought the more expensive one. I was very glad to have it when I got shingles and lost 4 months of work. If I hadn’t had that disability insurance I would have ended up on the street.
The nice thing about disability insurance is that it is much cheaper when you are younger. I did contemplate letting it go as I got older, but I knew during Open Enrollment it wasn’t always offered. I held onto it.
Shop your home and car insurance every year or so. Plan ahead so you can pay the entire bill and not pay extra for a payment plan.
What are you higher bills?
Do you cook from scratch?
What is your phone service? One of the pre-pay, I hope?
Make your own laundry detergent I do a box of borox, a box of washing soda, and a bar of zote shredded, in a 2 person house hold with LOTS of laundry. I have to remake it about twice a year
If you’re making chicken in bulk anyway, save the juices and make chicken tortilla soup.
I did that this week with a $4 rotisserie chicken when I had taken off the meat. It went into an instant pot to make broth and then I strained out the bones and added veggies, rice and corn tortillas. I now have 8 servings of soup and half went into the freezer.
Grow your own herbs. They’re easy to grow in a pot near a window (south-facing if possible). When weather permits, move them outdoors. Most herbs don’t have a lot of pests and don’t need a lot of attention. Fresh herbs take your cooking to a whole new level.
Revisit your default settings on home appliances. Do you really need to dry towels on Heavy or will Normal do? What about the hot water heater? Can you turn it down one notch? Repeat with every appliance or home system that has different settings.
Join the Laundry sub. Seriously. They’ve saved so many clothes and kitchen towels I thought I had to toss due to stains. I’m now on the lookout for polyquats in personal care products to eliminate inevitable future stains. I switched from pods back to powder found on The Spreadsheet bc it’s objectively more effective and cheaper too. Also Biz. OMG so much Biz. So yeah, join the sub.
OP, all good ideas except for the Keurig.
But the reality is, when one puts a budget into a spreadsheet, and other than $20 here and $40 there, if there is a huge discrepancy between outgoing and ingoing, there is no way to really make that up without figuring out a way to generate more income.
Even if only for an emergency fund —– which in the case of an unforseen expense—- can set people back weeks and months or more, and undo pretty much all attempts at frugality
The whole point of being FRUGAL is to take the money “you would have spent by not being frugal” and putting it somewhere for an unforsen emergency.
Electricity:
Low wattage far infrared panel heater
Heated throw/blanket
Hot water bottle
Want perfect coffee?
Grab a tin stovetop cup or alternative of choice
Fill it with your water potion of your coffee
Get it to 180-205 degrees f. Invest in a cheap digital thermometer from Amazon or somewhere. Stay cozy in that range. Doesn’t matter where at all.
When it hits that temp, add your ground coffee potion.
3-4 minutes done.
Tweak your proportions on a day to basis until you’re set.
It’s literally that easy, and nothing can beat it.
Coffee machines are bs. Unless you’re a diner and make coffee for 50 people an hour , nobody needs em.
Keep instant coffee too for days you’re running out the door.
Everything looks good. I would change a couple of things though.
Use Warm (90-110F) wash water for doing laundry. Water below 65F does not dissolve or activate detergent and body sebum/grease/oil solidifies and does not get removed from fabrics.
Use powder detergent or liquid detergent for doing laundry. They have more cleaning agents and water softening agents than pods/pacs and sheets/tiles.
Set your hot water heater to 120F. This gives you proper hot water and saves energy.
Use powder detergent or liquid/gel detergent for the dishwasher. This is more economical than pods/pacs.
Have you tried a spending fast? It’s a fun challenge. You don’t buy anything other than necessities for a month or so.
Ditch the Keurig. And your location would help me provide my 2 cents 🙂
Air dry clothes (can use a cheap box fan if you need more air flow)
Winterize your home- flip your ceiling fans to clockwise during cold weather, check for drafts, put plastic sheeting or blankets on top of north facing windows
Check the temperature on your hot water heater. Turning it from 140 F to 120 F could save up to 22% on its energy costs. Keeping it at 140 can cost $50-100 in standby heat alone per year.
Unplug or put on a power strip any electronics that draw phantom power. Anything that has a clock or an indicator light or anything that can be turned on with a remote is constantly drawing power.
Invest in a crock pot. You can cook a large batch of food with very little electricity and it adds radiant heat to your home. Add beans into your diet. A one pound bag of pinto or black beans costs under $2 and can be cooked in the crock pot while you work. Add a scoop to each meal for extra protein, fiber and iron.
Consider using at least warm water for your laundry and you must use hot for sheets and towels.
Bare minimum benefits in a paycheck isn’t a good idea if you are forgoing matching retirement funds. (Or HSA stuff, depending on the plan.)