Need help ideas on being frugal. I just took a 16k pay cut in salary. I

[Cat]

A lot of this depends on what it is…you mention a number of things…Some require more skill than others. Anyone can clean…likewise anyone can cook - just start off simple and use a cookbook. Canning requires a little more planning and know-how, but in it’s basics it is a very simple process. Car repair is definitely something that requires more know-how…but on most vehicles changing the oil is pretty easy.
Sewing too is something that may or may not be “up one’s alley” so to speak, but darning a sock or a quick stitch or two on a shirt tail can help get more use out of something AND can start a person learning the ins and outs of a skill.

I think it is fair to assume that a couple who is able to pull down 100K between them are not ignorant people…but are able to learn if they want to…

Something to remember–a couple who is able to pull down 100K between them probably have jobs and other community/parish/family commitments that leave them with little free time and energy. That would describe my husband’s job–he often puts in 12 hours a day, or he’s out of town entirely. I work shorter hours, but there’s a lot of pressure, and of course, the short-staffing that plagues so many hospitals. So when I come home, my brain is kind of fried–but then I have to go work out and I have to practice the organ, and usually, I have at least one choir that I play for, or one meeting to attend.

One reason I’m trying to learn to play the organ is to be able to use it as an extra income source if I’m ever downsized from my job (amazingly, hospitals downsize, even when they’re short-staff–sounds like a Dilbert cartoon, but it’s not funny).

 

[Joannm]

We need to keep in mind that we don’t know anyone else’s financial situation and just how far their income goes.

E.g., in our city, we pay the 4th highest property taxes in the nation. Just to give you an idea–my daughter and son-in-law live in a house comparable to ours (newer) in a good neighborhood down near St. Louis–they pay around $800.00 a year property taxes. My husband and I, up in Northern Illinois–remember, same basic house as my daughter and SIL, decent neighborhood, etc.–but we pay $4000.00 (That’s four thousand) a year in property taxes. Takes a pretty big chunk out of our income. Eight hundred vs. four thousand–wowee wow wow.

Same for gas. We pay almost forty cents a gallon more than my daughter and her husband. It really mounts up to a sizeable chunk of cash, even with just driving around our city to work, church, etc.

And then there’s my other daughter who lives in Texas! They pretty much pay HER to live there! Money goes a long way in Texas.

So location in the U.S. can definitely make a difference. Even the climate can make life cheaper or dearer. Mass. is pretty cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Same for Northern Illinois.

A lot of people on this thread are encouraging the OP to “do it themselves.” Cook, can, clean, car repair, sewing, etc. I agree, if you can do this kind of stuff, it’s a definite cash saver. BUT…lots of us have absolutely no talent or ability or knowledge of how to do this kind of stuff! So we have to hire people. Those who are handy are aghast that others actually hire people to do certain things, but that’s the way it is. It makes no sense to try to do it yourself if you have no clue about what you’re doing and you just mess it all up and end up spending more money than if you had just hired it done to begin with.

My contribution to the suggestions for the OP–take a good hard look at all your “stuff,” and see if you can sell any of it to raise money. It’s fairly easy to sell nowadays if you go online. If you have a collection of something (Precious Moments, baseball cards, etc.), this might be a good “rainy day,” especially if you run into someone who is willing to pay top dollar. A lot of people keep their collection until it’s not valuable anymore. Be savvy. Don’t sell something that you cherish, but don’t keep anything that’s just taking up space.

You are so right about the difference is cost of living. I am on the East Coast in a coastal area. Our taxes are about $8,000 a year. We live in a 1800 square ft house on a 60 x 100 plot with three tiny bedrooms and one bathroom. There are people in our area paying $20,000 in taxes just a mile from our house - and they area not huge houses. My sister is Texas has a 3,000 square ft house and her taxes are less than 1/2 ours.

Public transportation is terrible and gas is close to $4 a gallon. Housing prices are so high that there is a problem of young people not being able to live in the area anymore and people on fixed incomes are forced to sell their homes.

My husband just retired and I work for the Church so our income was significantly cut last year, but we still make over $100,000, which for many seems like a lot, but in our area it is not. We are fortunate to have our mortgage paid off. We just cancelled our land line which is a significant savings and went down to a lesser cable package (there is nothing good on TV anyway.) My husband does most of the home repairs and do our own gardening despite everyone else on the block using a gardener. Our lawn isn’t perfect but it’s green. We rarely go out to eat (which I miss), and we only buy clothes from the clearance rack or on sale. Our vacation this year was an expense but we visited our daughter who lives across the country and we decided to splurge for it. Still we spent less than $4,000 for 10 days for plane, car, eating out, and hotels by using points and staying at hotels that served breakfast and had a fridge in the room to keep lunch foods. I know people who spend much more on vacations for less time. Visiting our children is a priority so much our what we save is spent on that. Next year when we go visit we are probably going camping with them which will be a savings.

In our area, making less than $100,000 a year could create some difficulties and it is not always a reality to be able to move to an area with a lower cost of living. Still when I retire we might consider it, but all the areas I like are expensive as well. I need to be near the water. It’s just in my bones. I currently live 10 minutes from the beach and while I hate sitting in the sun, the beach at night or in the winter is wonderful. I wouldn’t mind living near a lake. As long as there is a big body of water close by.

 

[hcmusicguy]

Here are ways I’d recommend:

(1) Eat out less. This is something I know I could stand to work on a little more!

(2) Review your entertainment budget: Find things to do as a family that are cheap or even free. This is one of the reasons my wife and I almost never go to the movies. Rent movies from the Library rather than Blockbuster or Netflix.

(3) Cancel the cable television or satellite subscription. If you live in a metropolitan area, a rabbit-ears type antenna is cheap and works well. I’ve never paid a dime for television since I’ve lived on my own (5+ years) and I have no intention of getting cable anytime soon.

(4) If you have a smartphone with an expensive data plan, ditch it, if it’s not essential for work. Go back to a “dumb phone” (as I call them) if you can.

(5) Not sure what your transportation situation is, but consider going from a 2-car household to a 1-car household. If you live in an area that offers it, consider using public transportation to get to/from work. Many (if not most/all) PT systems offer a monthly pass that is usually cheaper than the combined cost of gas, insurance, and maintenance for your car. If we didn’t live so far out in the 'burbs where having a vehicle is kind of a necessary evil, I’d give up my car in a heartbeat.

 

[GusIsAGirl]

Food can be a big expense. Cut down on meat, and use it for a flavoring more than the centerpiece of the meal. Beans, beans, good for your heart, the more you eat, the more you… save. (what did you think I was going to say?)

Seriously, dried pinto beans are 63 cents a pound where I live. Eggs also are cheap. I eat a lot of omelets. Oatmeal (the kind you cook, not the instant packs) is good for breakfast. Throw a spoonful of peanut butter in for protein. Spend some time on the weekends, planning, and cooking things like beans ahead, chopping up vegetables, and that way when it’s Wednesday night and you’re all tired and tempted to eat out or eat convenience foods, you can just pull some precooked beans or something out of the freezer, grab some tortillas and in a few minutes you have dinner.

Coffee can be pricey if you are a coffee snob like me! Tip: They sell bricks of espresso grounds for a few dollars, and it makes as much coffee as the expensive stuff and is just as tasty.

Planning also helps with bringing lunches and cutting down on eating out. When I worked in an office, I used to bring a bag of salad greens, a container of chicken, and a container of homemade dressing at the beginning of the week and I wasn’t tempted to eat out! If you don’t have storage for this kind of stuff, you can get an insulated lunch bag and an ice pack, and bring it every day. The point is…bring it every day!

Cars–you can drive and drive a car for a long time. I currently share a 16 year old car with my roommate. We joke that prayer keeps it going. Well, that and maintenance. But the expenses are still cheaper than a car payment would be.

Sorry for my long rambling post…I hope these tips help you! It’s mostly about being creative and thinking outside the piggybank. :newidea:

 

[Petite]

FWIW: there’s a great book, that is somewhat dated (!) called TIGHTWAD GAZETTE. This was published back in the 1990’s by Amy Dacyczyn , who with her husband raised six children in rural Maine on her husband’s Naval pension of about $28K. Most public libraries carry the books—it’s in three separate volumes or one combined. You can also get relatively inexpensive copies of it from Amazon: amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=tightwad+gazette&sprefix=tightwad%2Caps%2C167

What I really like about her books is that she actually LIVED/LIVES by what she wrote about. She approaches frugality holistically—it’s not just a collection of hamburger or lentil recipes. When I was in a tight economic spot many years ago, I applied a lot of her principles to my life, and amazingly, they worked!

Recently, I read some interviews with her three daughters (She had 3 daughters and 3 sons.), who are now adults. They seem like very well adjusted women, who greatly benefited from growing up in a ‘tightwad’ household.

There are some things Amy wrote about that are dated —she was rather scathing on computers and internet. In more recent interviews, she has admitted as much. I doubt anyone would do every single thing she advocates to keep expenses down, but her underlying principle is to give you the basic tools so that you can apply ‘tighwaddery’ to your own particular situation.

She has a strong moral sense also–she does not advocate saving money at the expense of others/the system, etc. For example: she does not advocate taking a pile of paper napkins from a fast food restaurant or piles of ketchup packages so that you don’t have to buy them yourself.

 

[AmeliaJoanna]

I could write a book on being frugal! We’re such good friends with Lady Poverty that we don’t even pay income tax. $100k is wealthy in my book.

I guess you don’t need pointers about using the food bank or dumpster diving, but there are several good books about living frugally and well - none by Catholics.

The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn
Living More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre
More-with-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre
Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin

Excellent suggestions. Tightwad suggestion is to check them out from your local library.

Thrift shops are one of my favorite things out there. I’d shop at them even if I could afford otherwise.

 

[Cat]

Other posters have eluded to it, so I’ll elaborate a bit–one way to be “frugal” is to deliberately and constantly cultivate a mindset of non-materialism.

Although in the United States, we are constantly bombarded with messages that we NEED this or that, we really don’t need much. Food, shelter, decent clothing, medical care when necessary, insurance. That’s about it, really.

I’ve seen several posts on this thread about shopping. Well, I say, don’t shop at all, ever, or at least don’t shop until you have determined that you truly NEED the thing that you are shopping for. Then go straight to the place where you can purchase that one item, buy it, and leave. Don’t stroll around looking for bargains or enjoying the atmosphere of being in a store. Why do that, and feed the desire for more “stuff” that you probably don’t need?

In the U.S., we consider “shopping” a recreational pursuit. Pick up almost any tourism brochure, and you will see a section on “Shopping.” It’s kind of bizarre!

Same for “eating.” We no longer eat in the U.S. because we’re hungry. We eat for recreation. “Eating out” is consistently listed when people describe their favorite recreational pasttimes. Again, it’s bizarre! We used to “eat out” because we were travelling and had no picnic food left in our cooler, and needed to eat because we were hungry. Even then, many families just stopped at a grocery store and brought some lunch meat and apples for an “on the road” meal. Boy, those times are gone!

Peter Walsh has written an excellent book called It’s All Too Much! about the constant craving for “stuff” and how to overcome this craving. Yes, on the surface, the book appears to be another self-help text on organization and de-cluttering, but it’s much more than that. Walsh does a beautiful job of describing how materialism is at the root of so much of our constant search to acquire more “stuff,” and he describes how to live much more simply. I would recommend the book to the OP and others who are looking to “downsize.”

My daughter just wrote a beautiful blog about simply enjoying the view. I was so touched by that concept. Today, when I went to Mass (day off! Yay!), I really tried to look around at the beautiful Midwest late summer scenery in my city, and enjoy the “view” of life in 2013 in Northern Illinois. And it was totally free!

I hope this post inspires you!

 

[Bonnie]

Same for “eating.” We no longer eat in the U.S. because we’re hungry. We eat for recreation. “Eating out” is consistently listed when people describe their favorite recreational pasttimes. Again, it’s bizarre! We used to “eat out” because we were travelling and had no picnic food left in our cooler, and needed to eat because we were hungry. Even then, many families just stopped at a grocery store and brought some lunch meat and apples for an “on the road” meal. Boy, those times are gone!

Not quite gone - this is what I prefer. My husband got used to eating out often before I met him. It’s been a struggle to accommodate my frugalness and his idea of fun.

Peter Walsh has written an excellent book called It’s All Too Much! about the constant craving for “stuff” and how to overcome this craving.

Found it in the library system & put a hold on it. The library is another wonderful freebie. We could never afford to buy all the books we enjoy reading. Of course, no TV gives us plenty of time to read!

 

[gardenswithkids]

If you don’t know how, learn to cook. Prepare meals at home and save eating out at restaurants for special occasions.

Watch where your money goes. Look at past credit card statements and old checks to see where you spend your money. Learning your financial habits will help you know how to make most effective changes. Financial tracking programs can be very useful with this.

Cut the vices. Alcohol and tobacco are expensive.

Stay out of places that tempt you to overspend or visit there less frequently.

Remember that bargains and discounts are neither frugal nor smart buys if you don’t need them. You save money by not spending it.

Get along with your spouse. Seriously, keep this change to more frugal living in perspective. Divorce and marriage counseling is very expensive! I know a guy who took a pay cut–and the resulting financial problems caused lots arguing about money with his wife. In the end, the lawyers got most of their money, and now they’re divorced and having to pay for two houses. Stupid, stupid, stupid! One of the best financial decisions you can make is to act loving toward your wife–and stay married to her!

With that last thought in mind–pick your wife a flower from your garden or the grocery store rather than giving her an expensive bouquet from a florist. Or however she likes to be wooed, make sure you do something to continue to woo her! Financial strains and changes can be tough on marriages. If you married well, a happy wife doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. You need to do something besides making money to keep/make your wife happy. Do something wonderful, different and cheap to keep/bring joy into your marriage. Pick flowers, take walks or bike rides with her or make coffee for her in the morning. Don’t argue about money with her and make sure you do something nice for her daily. It will an investment that pays dividends.
:flowers:

 

[Cath4life]

Get along with your spouse. Seriously, keep this change to more frugal living in perspective. Divorce and marriage counseling is very expensive! I know a guy who took a pay cut–and the resulting financial problems caused lots arguing about money with his wife. In the end, the lawyers got most of their money, and now they’re divorced and having to pay for two houses. Stupid, stupid, stupid! One of the best financial decisions you can make is to act loving toward your wife–and stay married to her!

With that last thought in mind–pick your wife a flower from your garden or the grocery store rather than giving her an expensive bouquet from a florist. Or however she likes to be wooed, make sure you do something to continue to woo her! Financial strains and changes can be tough on marriages. If you married well, a happy wife doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. You need to do something besides making money to keep/make your wife happy. Do something wonderful, different and cheap to keep/bring joy into your marriage. Pick flowers, take walks or bike rides with her or make coffee for her in the morning. Don’t argue about money with her and make sure you do something nice for her daily. It will an investment that pays dividends.
:flowers:

I absolutely loved your reflection on marriage and frugalness couldn’t agree with you more. I also forwarded your response to my friend who is in the process of a nasty divorce battle.

Blessings,: