For school, I've found that using looseleaf paper rather than spiral notebooks helps me to actually use all the paper and still keep track of what's where.

Or you can just start working one day a week at Starbucks and get a free pounds of coffee (plus free drinks and 30% discounts).

What really irks me is I actually used to work at the place across the street where we buy our coffee. I got free coffee for years and now it's breaking me. Incidentally, that's how I know my home use isn't disproportionate to what they use there...it's just an expensive habit I guess.

20-30 ounces a day? That's gotta be more than the 1.65$ for the cup you said he would get in the morning.

Anyways, I'm really loving this thread. It totally agrees with my perspective on buying.

I think one of the biggest money drains on a person(other than a vice) are the little things- the 1-5$ items people buy because it doesn't have the bite of a larger purchase. Like pop/chips from a vending machine. You're paying a lot for them packaging it and putting it in a machine. If you go out and eat at McDonalds every couple of days, that's at least 10$ a week, or 40$ a month. And if you have a cuppa jo every morning as well, that's another 50$ a month. That's just food. There are tons of little things that you can buy for just a few of your hard earned dollars, and the sheer volume of these little things take a sizeable chunk of your salary. You don't need it, just let the impulse pass and you'll forget all about that neat keychain you saw or that magazine next to the counter.

For the fun times, don't take your debit or credit cards to the bar and don't borrow more money from a friend. Start your drinking before you go and then take enough money for cover / coat check and a couple of drinks.

Great contributions everyone. I love hearing people's success stories about how they are living below their means. It is very refreshing.

I agree with listid's idea for going out. If you have that credit card along and you are tying one on, you are much more likely to spend wildly. Bring what you can afford in cash for the fun that night, whether it is $10 or $20 or more. And I second the notion of drinking a few at home if you are going to a bar. $1 per beer (or less) or $3 plus tip, hmmm, yep $1 sounds better.

Here is another idea for drinking and having fun. Get a group of friends together and stay in for the night. Host an informal BYOB party for 4-6 of your friends one night instead of going out. I'm not suggesting that you stop going out completely if that is what you are into, but try staying in one or two weekends a month instead of going out. You will probably find it less costly and you might just have a better time too.

Best thing we did was to stop renting.

I spent 2 yrs living with my parents, Powersaving. We managed to put a downpayment on a house, and presto. no more rent money disappearing down the tube.

Pay cash for cars. Buy used, then save the equiv of a car payment for 2 yrs, buy another used, etc.

do not nickle and dime yourselves with add-ons: telephone service with call waiting, etc etc, extra $5/month plus taxes per service. same with cable tv.

shop at No frills type stores. save about $50 on a $200 shopping.

Eat out maybe once a month.

As has been said before, I buy everything used, preferably from a garage sale. In my current apartment I daid less then $5 for every piece of furniture, including an ikea desk chair, a wonderful hommade microwave stand, and two couches and a recliner that were free (either from friends moving away or trash-picked). Got a working color TV for $5 too.

NEVER buy books new. Use Campus Books or Book Finder, sites that search dozens of used book sites for what you want.

And speaking of books, a good bookcase will set you back $50. I made mine out of boards and cinder blocks (I'll attach a photo if I can ever get a digital camera), cost $15, much sturdier and I actualy get compliments on the style.

One more idea.

If you live in an urban area, sell your car. Instead use flexcar, or another car sharing network. Basicaly you pay $35 a month, and then can drive any of the hundreds of cars they have scattered around the metro area for $9/hr. Unless you use your car regularly for commuting or the like, flexcar is much cheaper then paying for insurance, parking, gas and repairs on a car in an urban area. My boss sold her late model BMW and saves hundreds a month using flexcar.

^Hey, that is a new one on me. I don't live in a Metro enough area for this to make sense for me, but it is an interesting idea. Oh, and just a minor correction from their website... the $35 fee is annual, not monthly. And $9/hour for their standard plan is not bad. I have seen parking go for close to that in Boston when visiting there.

Oh, and in other news... I just got back from a ski trip to Beaver Creek, CO. And, yes, I did it on a frugal budget. :) I have some good connections which made the whole deal sweeter. I will post some details later, but I think this definitely qualifies as living VERY well, while still living below our means.

"Eating in" is an excellent way to save alot of money. My wife clips coupons all week and we save alot of money on food that way. Just dining at home can save tons of cash each week.

man i love flexcar. it's such a great idea.

Sometimes you've got to spend some to save some. We used to make a lot of bean soup and split pea soup for dinner to save money, because it's cheap and filling and nutritious. But it always tasted like crap. Now we buy vegetable stock (meat stock is available, too), in cartons for about two bucks a quart. The stock makes all the difference. Three bucks worth makes two meals worth of nutritious, filling, great-tasting soup for two people with good appetites, for a total cost of under five bucks -- beans and split peas, carrots, potatoes, onions, cost very little. We're eating more soup and bean stews now, and saving more money, and actually enjoying it.

This post could equally well go in Tilted Travel. Since my main goal is to share how we saved a bundle of money by travelling the way we did, I thought this would be the appropriate venue. I hope that everyone can take away something positive from our experience.

My wife and I just returned from a fabulous vacation in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Beaver Creek is the sister resort to the more well-known Vail, CO. It is also the site of numerous downhill world-cup racing events and has some of the best skiing in the world. Now being as frugal as we are, how did we manage to take this luxurious vacation? We took this trip for just over $1000 for the two of us including airfare, car rental etc.

The biggest single thing that made this trip possible for us is that my mom lives in Beaver Creek and is a resident partner at a great rental home on the mountain. The place usually rents for $2300 per night during the ski season (7 night minimum), but they had a brief vacancy in March and invited us out to stay during that time. I didn't want to pass up the opportunity, so we packed our bags and went for it. For those of you who are curious, you can see the residence at Elkview.com. Just try not to get too jealous and don't go hitting up my mom for a discounted rate! :lol:

Here are the details of what we did:

What we paid for travel-
Airfare - $454 for two tickets on ATA roundtrip from Louisville
Rental Car in CO - $167 paid for compact car, got a Minivan instead
Airport parking in Louisville - $63 for 7 days parking
Eating out - $160 ($100 of that was a thank you dinner for my mom and her husband for letting us stay at the house)
Ski Lift tickets - $60 (My mom had vouchers that gave us some free and some discounted lift tickets)
Pet Boarding - $196 (Two dogs for a week stay)
Ski Rental - FREE (Mom knows the guys who run the ski shop)
Snowshoe Rental - FREE (The lodge has snowshoes for the guests)
Ski Lesson for my wife - FREE (Mom knows the guy in charge of lessons on the mountain)
Snowshoe lift tickets - FREE (Mom works part-time on the mountain and gets two free foot lift tickets per season)
Eating In - FREE (We ate breakfast and dinner mostly at home with my mom and her husband and packed our lunches)

Our total that we paid was $1094 for everything.

What we would have paid-

Now this is a bit subjective, because we might not have taken the trip at all if it was too much more expensive. But I will try to estimate the costs to give you an idea of what we might have paid for the trip.

Airfare - $756 ($376 was the best rate flying from Lexington instead of Louisville)
Car Rental - $315 (What the minivan would have cost us if we had booked that)
Housing - $13800 if we had rented Elkview ourselves (This could have been less if we stayed somewhere else. It wouldn't have been cheap since even the Motel 6 is $189/night)
Eating out - $300 (If we were able to keep our costs down to $50 per day for two people... not easy in Beaver Creek!)
Lift Tickets - $462 (6 lift tickets, 4 days skiing for me, 2 for my wife at $77 per day)
Pet Boarding - $196 (This stays the same since we couldn't avoid the cost)
Ski Rental - $200 ($20 per day for 2 people for 5 days)
Ski Lesson - $157 (Full day adult lesson with lunch)
Snowshoe Rental - $40 ($10 per day for 2 people for 2 days)
Snowshoe lift tickets - $30

The total goes up to over $16,200 with everything included!!! We saved over $15,000 on this trip. And, yes, we thanked my mom and her husband profusely, though probably not enough. :)

Now I will be the first to admit that not everyone can get the same kind of deals that we did, but similar principles can be applied. Think about who you know in what locations. Maybe you have a relative who lives in Orlando, FL. Or know someone well who works in a resort town in the Smoky mountains. In addition to possibly providing free lodging, a local can point you to the best dining, maybe find you discounted tickets to local attractions, etc.

Cutting your own hair is something that can reduce your living expenses. The problem with this is that if you don't like buzz cuts, it might not be worth the hassle. If however, you like buzz cuts, this might be alright. ( Self Haircuts Thread )

Another thing is to really really keep track of all of the money you spend (on everything! Don't let cheat yourself by not recording the small things like ... listing something on eBay, or buying a gumball). I started doing this starting April 1st, and I'm surprised just how much money I've been spending. A true eye opener, and the records I am now keeping may be useful in the future.

Staying with friends and relatives? UGH! Not in a million years... you want to preserve a friendship - don't mooch -- stay at a hotel. The money you save costs you a lot more in the long run.

BTW -- imagine what you did to your mother's budget. Your meals weren't free -- She paid for them. She doubled her food budget for the week, not exactly frugal

I'm just wondering - what type of organization system do you use for this ? I wanted to do this, though I can't find an easier way to do it besides writing every expense down on a piece of notebook paper [i'd often forget and then get other money, etc.] eh, maybe that's just life :o

I use Excel to keep track of my money, though, since I only keep track of cash withdrawals, I don't really keep track of every little thing.

I just use Excel. On my desktop, I have the Excel sheet to make it very easily accessible. I'm currently messing with how to organize my the data (seems best to have separate columns for spending and saving. Easier to tally things up), but think I found something that works well enough:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...wninja/123.png

It does take disipline to keep track of everything, but if you're like me and enjoy looking at statistics, this might be a bit easier. If Excel isn't enough, you may want to look into Quicken, or MS Money (but excel should be just fine for simple book keeping.)

This is a great thread. My parents taught me a lot of the same stuff that you all are talking about... basically BUY EVERYTHING USED and EAT AT HOME (and make your own lunch). The times that I am actually able to stick to this (still working on it) have saved me a great deal of money, and also help me feel like I'm fighting the evils of consumption.

To which I'll add, Wal-Mart is cheap, but it's also oppressive. Buying cheap isn't everything.

What I'm wondering, though (and because I study economic anthropology), is whether any of the people who respond to this thread are non-Western. I have a feeling that most of us are North American/European... and wonder if people from different cultures have different ideas of spending and saving. Unfortunately American patterns of consumption have spread around the globe, but I'd like to hear how other cultures fight this pressure to consume and own more stuff.

I'm was raised by non-western parents who immigrated here before I was born. I have a bit of both cultures in me.

You want to check out gnucash. It does all the fancy bookkeeping stuff you want, for free, without fooling around with a custom excel spreadsheet.

+N

DJ Happy: as a Lebanese I definitely agree with your description.. Lebanese culture is showy. And being extra-thrifty is looked down upon. Which implies some vanity and wastefulness. But also, as a counterpart, some generosity (though the motives might not necessarily be pure).

I grew up in a relatively well off family, though my parents weren't as well off when they were growing up. Still, I grew up not needing anything, and not caring that much about money (not that I was throwing it from the window, but I wasn't being as careful with it as I could be).

Now that I'm living on my own, and earning my own money, I try to be more careful. Although, since I make a decent salary, and know in the back of my head that I have my parent's safety net below me in case anything unfortunate should happen; I probably don't have as much incentive to try to save a lot.

And you can't just tear out the cultural part.. It feels right to me not to care about expenses much (assumuing they're not gonna severely hurt me financially).

Abaya (my gf) had some issues at time with my spending habits, since she has a different mentality about it. Nothing we couldn't overcome; but still, it's an issue at times.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I have a good relationship with my friends and relatives and I consider myself a very good houseguest. I don't have any problem putting up friends or relatives in my house either. In fact, I would take it as a slight if someone came to visit with us and stayed in a hotel nearby instead of in our home. If we have the room, you are welcome to stay. I wouldn't want to stay in a crappy hotel for $80/night just for a bed and a shower. I would rather stay with a friend and take them out for a nice dinner for $60. We would have more time to visit together and catch up on each other's lives and I would still come out ahead financially. To me, it is all about reciprocation. I wouldn't stay with someone without taking them out to dinner, or showing up with a gift for their house, or making them a nice meal in their home. Something to show my appreciation for the hospitality. I think that our society has gotten too far away from the values of interpersonal relationships. "Preserving a friendship" to me is not about avoiding spending time together by staying in an impersonal hotel.

BTW, the meals were free. She didn't double her food budget. I'll tell you why. My mom is a managing resident partner at a resort home. The place was rented out the week before we were there by a group of Texas oil men who entertained some guests and talked business... and left a bunch of unopened food behind when they departed. Pretty much every meal we ate at home that week was from the stocks of what the previous guests left behind. I will be the first to admit that my situation here is very unique. Most people don't have that kind of luxury, and if you are staying with someone for more than a day or two, you should definitely buy some groceries and offer to cook a meal for everyone. While I was there at my mom's place, we bought some groceries too and took her and her husband out to dinner twice as a thank you for letting us stay there.

Plus you have to remember that my mom is the queen of frugality. She taught me most everything I know. And we are very open and conversant about finances. She didn't spend anything extra on having us out for the week. No, wait... She did buy me lunch one day. So, my mom spent $6 on having me out for the week. :)

I always round up on all my deductions in my (our-don't ask!) checkbook. Quarterly I've saved lots of cash I never even had to think about. For those of you who really count pennies...c'mon, they'll be defunct soon enough.

I always prefer to think in dollars instead of coinage. And lots of commas for that matter!

i'm fortunate enough to be fairly young (only 21 :P) and being rather well off.
after all my bills are paid, groceries are bought, gas is purchased, etc. i still have about $1900 to put in the bank, or spend on any of the non essential stuff. i consider myself to be living rather well below my means.

i was fortunate enough to be raised by parents who had experienced some rather tight financial situations. so its been beat into me since birth, that "money doesn't grow on trees" ;)
if theres one thing i've learned from my father.. its the value of being able to do for yourself. he's a journeyman electrician by trade, an exceptional mechanic by hobby, and a worth while plumber, carpenter, and roofer. pretty much anything that needs to be done in construction, or on a farm, he can do. i can't recall how many times we've had to fix a car, repair a busted pipe, or add a lightswitch/socket.
i highly recommend that everybody learn at least one secondary skill, that you can rely on if something needs done. trust me, being able to spend $50 in materials and a few hours of your time, is far better than spending several hundred to have somebody else do it for you.

from my mother, i learned what you should spend a few extra bucks on, and what you can get away with getting cheap.
whenever possible visit a farmer's market. 9times out of 10 you can get your produce far cheaper there than you can at a supermarket, and its undoubtably fresher and better for you.
medicines, and breakfast cereals, go with the cheap stuff. most of the time its made by the same manufacturer anyhow.
buy in bulk and freeze what you don't immediately use. not having to run to the store every night saves you money on gas. and you get more for less anyhow.
some extremely perishable items, like milk and bread, only buy as much as you will use. if you buy a gallon of milk, and only use half before it goes bad, your wasting money. i buy these items as i go, the price is pretty stable on these items.
don't buy soda's, bottled juices, stuff like that.. get the frozen concentrate stuff, it keeps longer and costs less.

remember, pride doesn't pay the bills! if you honestly find yourself barely squeeking by, and your not spending wildly, look at government aid programs. if you need the help, ask for it, theres nothing welfare if you genuinly need it.

take your tax refunds for a few years and put them towards your bills. if something goes wrong you'll be thankful for that extra month's payment.

never ever pay the minimum on your credit cards, your only paying the intrest and not the premium. even a few dollars over helps.

last.. resist the urge to impulse buy ;) you don't NEED to be spending 50dollars on that new video game. the price will drop in a month (and give you ample time to save as well)
think of it as being on a financial diet ;) plan everything out ahead of time, and stick to it.

I agree... my dad is the same way as yours, taught himself pretty much everything. Only problem is that he didn't teach me as much, or maybe I just didn't pay enough attention. Or I don't have time... I mean, I know how to change my oil, but it always seems faster to take it to the shop (cheaper with a coupon, too). I am not looking forward to many years in the future when I don't have my dad to call in a practical emergency... "How do I fix this?"... for someone without a college degree, he knows a hell of a lot more than I do (with my upcoming MA degree). Meh, wish I could download his brain, it would sure save me money.

By the way Thalakos, are you from Pennsylvania? I noticed you said "needs done" and that is a distinctly PA thing (esp. central).

really makes you appreciate the previous generation and their "do it yourself" attitude doesn't it? ;)
i'd be willing to bet money, that if you asked him to teach you even a little bit at a time, he'd take the time to do it.


nope! oregon ;) my parents (especially my father) have a little redneck in em. so i grew up with a little bit of a redneck accent. this was just one of many phrases i've grown up saying hehe

Be sure to indulge yourself on the inter-library loan for books yours does not normally carry on their shelves. What this basically means is that you can get nearly any book ever published for the normal check-out period. The downside is that it can also take 10 days sometimes for the book to show up, more if checked out when you request it.

Just made a move to another province. We managed to get most of our furniture for nothing. Freebies includes:

2 couches
1 computer desk
1 small desk
1 folding table
1 coffee table
2 matching wing chairs
3 more living room style chairs
set of drinking glasses
1 living room lamp
1 twin size bed

All we had to do was ask. My friend made a post on his work website saying that we'd pick up any old furniture people had lying around on the day that we had our moving van, and I made a couple of calls. Many people are glad to give up their old unwanted furniture if you're willing to come get it and move it yourself.

Total cost: The extra mileage on the moving van and a few cheap bottles of wine as thank you gifts.

Some of it may not look the trendiest, but the stuff is far from garbage, and does the job great for 3 guys who just graduated university and working on their student loans.