I’m honestly getting tired of living super frugal all the time. I grew up when my parents were students and was a student myself until recently. There’s something really nice about not having to think about every single dollar. I don’t just want to optimize saving anymore, I want to earn more.
However, I can splurge more if I save more in other areas. So where do you actually maximize value in life? When is it worth paying for luxury, quality, time-saving, or just splurging a bit? And when does it still make sense to stay frugal?
I’m trying to find that balance where I both make more and live better, not just cheaper.
Finding the Balance Between Frugal and Free: When is it worth spending more? When does it make sense to be more frugal?
byu/eldrinor inFrugal
Posted by eldrinor
7 Comments
I maximize in areas I care about (buying a nicer house in a good area, traveling 3-4x a year, working as little as possible) and minimize in areas I don’t care for (packing lunch, buying clothes from costco once a year, buying used reliable cars).
Find what your values are and spend more for those values.
I am really not that frugal anymore, because I started valuing my time. I just do not have that much free time anymore, so I treat it like the precious resource it is. I spend money on convenience a lot, with the exception of food delivery. I almost never get food delivered. Its often 40% more expensive, and I can’t justify that one. For example, dishwasher and laundry pods vs powder, literally no more effort to use powder, so I use it. Going to a second grocery store to save money, absolutely not.
Some things I care about, most things I don’t. Frugal where not important and enjoy myself (within my means) elsewhere.
Edit: on reading your post, this isn’t what you were asking at all OP 💀 sorry. I’ll leave my comment though in case it helps 😅
I don’t know that I have any advice or an answer, but I like to splurge on little things every now and then to make scrimping and saving and working all the time feel worth it. Like when I get paid, I treat myself to one meal out, somewhere I really like. A nice sushi roll, or an indian buffet, etc. I eat a lot of beans, rice, potatoes, tuna, lentils… Sometimes it’s nice to have a special meal that I didn’t cook. Being frugal is great but you have to remember to nourish your heart and mind too.
It’s also helped me to spend time on my free hobbies. I’ve recently gotten into hiking (just beginning to dip my toes in!) and that’s been really good for my mindset ☺️ I guess the trick is just balancing your values with your well-being and happiness. They should reinforce each other, not drain all your joy and energy
Shoes and your mattress. You spend nearly all your life in one or the other, and foot and back pain make you miserable.
However, I can splurge more if I save more in other areas. So where do you actually maximize value in life When is it worth paying for luxury, quality, time-saving, or just splurging a bit? And when does it still make sense to stay frugal? I feel like it’s different for everybody but I definitely think it’s worth it to make a decent amount of money to at least 115k because at that point it’s like you have enough to where you can save a lot but you can splurge on the things that you want without an issue.
But mainly it could just be things that you like or things that save you time or just things that are a little bit more quality so it may cost a little bit more but it’s not like you’re paying for designer stuff like clothes for instance you can Nike sweatpants and pay $60 for it and it could be a great quality pair of sweatpants but when you look and you realize oh it’s 58% cotton and 42% polyester and then you search online and you find a similar pair of pants for 20 bucks and you order it and it’s no different than the Nike ones I feel like I got what I wanted and I just found it cheaper and then the same thing when it comes to like appliances like I don’t want a vacuum that I have to do 30,000 passes for it to clean up a little bit of crumbs on my carpet so I’ll watch a vacuum Wars video on YouTube just to find the best one and then see how much it cost and then compare it with the runner-up and see if it still does what I want it to do. And then I really don’t care about traveling that much like if anything I could go for a nice out of state vacation once a year but I like staying home and playing video games or just driving my car around or watching movies and TV shows and a lot of that stuff is low cost.
But it also depends on your goals as well because usually if you’re being frugal you’re trying to save money for a reason and if that reason is early retirement or just retirement in general the frugality of it would be considered your lifetime thing like that’s just how you want to live your life so it’s not as expensive and you could actually afford retirement because once you start wanting more stuff then your average monthly living expenses go up and you need more income to cover those expenses so if you want more or if you want to do more then you need more money so at that point you have to go get a higher paying job or go get the skills that you need to get that job then get a higher pay that can support the lifestyle you want.
If you click my profile and go under Social Links I do have like a little budget spreadsheet for free. But after you fill it out you can kind of get it an idea of how much you can actually save and then you should look into a retirement calculator and see how much you actually need and then go from there I recommend the nerd wallet retirement calculator that one’s pretty good
Based on your post, what little information there is in it, if I stressed about life like you seem to I wouldn’t enjoy life either. I say that because I believe that is where you are going wrong. I don’t think what you spend has anything to do with your quality of life. Some of the things I most enjoy and get the most benefit out of are free to me or very low cost.
Examples include going for a walk or riding my bicycle. I bought my bicycle for about $200 and shoes, which I do go through occasionally, are no more than $50/pair. So biking and walking are not completely free but they are very cheap activities which yield immense benefits for me.
To address your question though, I buy what costs the least over time. Back to the physical activity example, I bought a set of dumbbells and a bench which has replaced the need for a gym membership. Over time that equipment has cost far less than even the cheapest gym memberships and I use them nearly every single day. I take the same approach the everything.
One example of a failure of mine was a blender I bought. I bought a cheap Hamilton Beach from Walmart. It broken within about 6 months. I did some research and discovered that for my use cases, a serious blender was in order. Some would say I “splurged”, but I didn’t, I merely bought a blender which could do what I needed it to do. I bought a Vitamix, which cost vastly more and which has lasted for over a decade now. To this day it acts like it was made yesterday every single time I use it.
Spending is a simple mathematical equation for me. I spend whatever is necessary on what will cost me the least in the long run.