Frugal living challenge

[PrincessFiona]

I started cleaning out bedrooms last week and realized that ... holy shit do we buy a lot of crap.

My kitchen drawers are cluttered with crap ... the house feels cluttered....Every day when I pick up, I'm basically transferring around unnecessary junk. Also, my teens always have their hands out for cash.

Even when I look into the pantry/fridge lately I realize that I do a lot of buying of what is easy and quick but is unnecessarily expensive.

I want 2013 to be the year that we, as a family, start living frugally.

Anyone else up for this?

Kris

[GrayMatterWife]

What would be involved with the commitment? I have to buy furniture for the new house this year. I am being painfully neurotic about trying to get the best prices and shop around, etc., but I am not sure if I would qualify as "frugal"--truly frugal would be absolutely nothing more than completely necessary. We've been eating off a $30 card table and chairs set for 15 months...a real wood kitchen table is, in all honesty, an indulgence, even if I got it as-is clearance...

[MrsK]

I don't know if I can keep it up for a year with a big move on the horizon but I'd like to give it a try. I recommend starting small with weekly or monthly goals.

[PrincessFiona]

I think weekly/monthly goals are good too. We also are in the middle of making some bigger purchases for the house, but I'm filing them under the necessary, GMW. We have two large glass patio door and one picture window in the living room. It's freezing cold here and the cold radiates off of the windows. We don't have any type of window treatments at all and the privacy issue is also there in the evening.

We had a company come out and measure for window treatments after my IKEA curtains fell in the living room. We just stink at installing things properly.

We picked something as an investment ... so that is how I am treating it.

Last night, took Zoe to the grocery store and said "no" to the fruit snacks that I would usually cave on. The kids (all five) finish the box before I even get groceries put away...no nutritional value and just money spent.

I did better with spending years ago when I made grocery lists and only took cash with me to the store. I used to operate on a cash-only basis wherever I went and that was a HUGE help. I even saved money that way. Now, I use my bank card constantly and I would say that my grocery bill has easily doubled....My kids are bigger, but still...I am not thoughtful about what I buy.

Also, dh and I went to Target last weekend for specific items and came out with $400 of stuff. Did we need it all? I think ... NO!

Kris

[alison]

When I started seeing the ups guy more days than not, I realized that we needed to change our online spending habits. That's where we get burned. So, for the past 3 months I've set each of us on a $200 allowance. This includes all non-essentials like clothes (we really don't need more!), books, gadgets, snacks, movies, and so on. I was actually going through receipts and credit card statements and noting everything! It adds up quickly, and it was good for us to see how drastically we needed to cut back.

[MrsK]

The window treatments are actually a frugal investment. They will save heating/cooling costs and, if you get something quality that you love and use, you'll do better than replacing a cheap curtain over and over.

[diggitydot]

The window treatments are actually a frugal investment. They will save heating/cooling costs and, if you get something quality that you love and use, you'll do better than replacing a cheap curtain over and over.

Yup. It will save heating/cooling costs, particularly if you get cellular shades. Those puppies are great insulators.

[GrayMatterWife]

I make a shopping list for Target/grocery and STICK TO IT within usually a two or three item discrepancy. If I see something I hadn't thought of, I will jot it down and think it over, then add it to next week's list.

DH refuses to go shopping with me because I take too long. I write down the price for EVERYTHING, then tally it up before I check out. Making a list and pulling out a calculator draws attention (which, I think, is weird--I know lots of people who do this). But I have gotten all kinds of reactions--everything from snickering by pampered college students who can't conceive of a budget, to expressions of admiration from tired fellow shoppers who wish they had the time to make a list or the discipline to stick to it, to this one random guy who kind of accosted me and told me how much he'd like me to talk to his wife about sticking to a budget. I once had a woman ask me what I was doing, and I said that I was figuring out if I was going to make my budget or if I'd have to put something back, and she offered me a left-over gift certificate with $10 on it. OK, that was super-embarrassing...I explained that I was just really disciplined, not broke, but I don't think she believed me and looked at my three kids then gave me this smile of encouragement and said that someday the recession would end and things would be better. (Seriously, is budgeting really THAT weird that people think I am unable to feed my family?)

About a third of the time, my shopping attracts some kind of remark.

I started doing this in residency, and it helps immensely. I have a grocery/sundries budget per week, and tallying and tracking allows me to know what I have to put back on the shelf if I go over. My kids think it's a game...they wait until the finally tally, then ask: "Do we keep it or put something back, Mom???!!" then they discussed what they should put back on the shelf if we need to. For them, this is normal.

[PrincessFiona]

Thats similar to how I was....now that we earn more than training I seem to have loosened up. I gradually fell into a spending lifestyle. I want my self-control back! Lol

[MrsK]

I get looks sometimes when I go to the grocery with my coupon binder. But more often than not, people will ask me if I have an extra coupon for such-and-such that they need. If I do, I'm happy to help. Other times, people tell me that they feel like they should bet more organized with their couponing. The best is when I run into someone else with a binder and we can compare notes.

[GrayMatterWife]

I get looks sometimes when I go to the grocery with my coupon binder. But more often than not, people will ask me if I have an extra coupon for such-and-such that they need. If I do, I'm happy to help. Other times, people tell me that they feel like they should bet more organized with their couponing. The best is when I run into someone else with a binder and we can compare notes.

Maybe hyper-organizing grocery shopping is a lawyer thing? Once you've prepared a massive trial exhibit book or a real estate closing binder, you become obsessive about organizing information...

[ladymoreta]

I suck at budgeting. I'm a pay-yourself-first kind of girl. We put our allotted amounts into savings, 401k, debt repayment, and bills, and then I have fun with the rest. Some weeks that's buying more stuff at the grocery store; some weeks it's eating out; some weeks it's buying clothes or stuff off my Amazon wish list. Sticking to a budget for every category makes me twitchy. Good luck to you guys, though! According to Millionaire Next Door, I'm an outlier who gets about a paragraph's mention. We'll see in a few decades whether or not we pull it off...

ETA - I wanted to clarify that this isn't a post-training attitude! It's worked great for us through every step and with incomes from $20k-ish through attendinghood. The numbers change, but we've always had some savings (even when accruing debt, I like to keep some cash on hand) and flexibility in our spending.

[spotty_dog]

I'll be watching for inspiration. We have some significant home projects coming up but we don't want to slow down our savings rate, so I do feel like I need to trim back...somewhere. Groceries is one area where I could be more careful, especially if I am smarter about my garden and can provide more of our produce needs. (We had some 2000 sf planted last year and still bought 90% of our produce, gah. I can do better.) I should also probably convince DH that we need to stay home instead of going back to Maui in March. >.<

[MrsK]

I suck at budgeting. I'm a pay-yourself-first kind of girl. We put our allotted amounts into savings, 401k, debt repayment, and bills, and then I have fun with the rest. Some weeks that's buying more stuff at the grocery store; some weeks it's eating out; some weeks it's buying clothes or stuff off my Amazon wish list. Sticking to a budget for every category makes me twitchy. Good luck to you guys, though! According to Millionaire Next Door, I'm an outlier who gets about a paragraph's mention. We'll see in a few decades whether or not we pull it off...

ETA - I wanted to clarify that this isn't a post-training attitude! It's worked great for us through every step and with incomes from $20k-ish through attendinghood. The numbers change, but we've always had some savings (even when accruing debt, I like to keep some cash on hand) and flexibility in our spending.

I do this too. A specific percentage goes to savings/investments and the rest is in the same pot. As OCD as I am, I've never been able to stick to a very detailed budget. It stresses me out too much. I keep my eyes open for the best deal, work vigilantly to save on groceries, ask myself twice before I make any purchase however minor, and it usually shakes out in the end.

[spotty_dog]

I think it helps to have goals, and I think paying yourself first is a really prime tactic. In residency we didn't let ourselves touch the moonlighting pay, it all got funneled to retirement and college and savings. I kept a spreadsheet to help me stay in touch with spending so I could keep our expenses within his regular paycheck.

These days, within a week or so of payday we have a check written to the retirement account. It's non-negotiable and a pre-determined amount (1/12 of the IRS maximum). Then bills are paid. What's left goes into savings. We have a "magic number" (about 6-8 months of expenses, for emergencies) that we don't like the account to drop below. Roughly when taxes are about to come due, we compare the balance in the account, minus the amount we'll be writing for taxes, and see if we're above our number. If so, checks are written to college savings and taxable investing. Seeing all those account balances grow, and thinking about how great an early and comfortable retirement will be, keeps me motivated to minimize frivolous spending so there's plenty of that extra to send along.

DH has always been more prone to just spend carefully instead of explicitly budgeting, and he gets grumpy if I propose tracking expenses too closely. I think my mind works better with a budget/envelope system, but he's the money guy. So nowadays everything goes on the credit card, and if we have more than a month that's higher than typical, sometimes I'll analyze a few months of spending by budget category so we can re-examine our habits.