Your Finish Rich Plan - A Personal Finance Blog

Frugality Is Often Plain Old Common Sense

About half an hour ago I received SavingAdvice.com’s latest post about Free (Or Nearly Free) Entertainment For Every Week of the Year. To be honest, I was expecting a good 10 ideas (12 at most) to be explored through a one-year span. Imagine my surprise when I found 52 options! As she concludes

“There likely isn’t a neon sign pointing you to the free museum like the one that’s pointing to the multiplex. You have to search out some offerings by looking in local papers or visiting local websites”.

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I thought it was only fair that I drop by and leave a comment. As I was writing it, it dawned on me that I didn’t have much in the way if frugality posts. I do have one that stresses that saving more than you spend is more important than earning more money, but that’s about it. Oh, on that note, and before I forget to mention it, you might want to read PaidTwice’s post Sometimes It Is The Amount Of Money You Make. It doesn’t go against frugality, far from it, but makes a valid point:

”[...] there’s a limit to frugality. There’s a limit to saving and to investing and that limit is what we earn. […] If we only earn $2000 a month, it is hard to imagine being able to contribute $2200 to retirement every month”.

Her point falls right in line with the two-pronged approach to wealth that I believe is the best. You can hardly save your way to wealth without investing or starting your own business (thus increasing your income). Likewise, you can hardly earn your way to wealth because, as many riches to rags stories will prove, you can burn your way through tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars if you don’t learn to keep your expenses in check.

But I digress. There’s one reason that I don’t write much about being frugal. It’s because I naturally am quite the opposite. Not only am I a spender, I tend to be a compulsive one. This is an ongoing battle, and only recently have I started getting the upper hand. By the way, I am the first (but hopefully not the only) consumer of the advice I post on this blog J

Not being the most frugal person, I feelt ill-equipped to be doling out frugality advice. So I turned to my collection of personal finance e-books. I found one little gem called The Consumer’s Almanac, published by the American Financial Services Association Education Foundation (AFSAEF), and whose focus is essentially budgeting (a PDF version is also available).

As its name says, it’s an almanac. Nicely tucked in the middle of February’s budget planning is a list of cost-conscious shopping tips. Suit yourselves:

Low-Cost Shopping and Healthy Eating

• Buy in quantity and freeze meats, bread, and butter.
• Avoid costly convenience foods that are precooked, presweetened, spiced, instant, or individually packaged.
• Encourage children to help with cooking. If they helped make it, they’ll probably eat it.
• Eat before shopping to avoid impulse buying. Make a shopping list and stick to it.
• Buy nutritious snacks for children such as apples, oranges, bananas, carrots, celery, raisins, peanut butter, and popcorn. They are healthier and cheaper than most sweets.
• For a sweet tooth, buy graham crackers, animal crackers, or gingersnaps.
• Encourage children to drink more water by giving them their own water bottles.
• Use coupons only for items you normally purchase.
• Shop on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings for the shortest lines.
• Shop at discount food warehouses and buy in bulk. If your household is small, shop with a friend and share purchases.

General Shopping

Most retailers hold winter sales around the holidays. Prices are reduced to bring consumers back into the store after the holiday spending period. Also, it pays to be knowledgeable about the item or service you’re about to purchase. Take the time to polish your comparison shopping skills:

• Read the information on the label.
• Understand the maintenance requirements.
• Pay attention to differences in quality.
• Make a purchasing decision after you’ve researched the item.

Internet Shopping

The world has become your personal in-home shopping mall. You need to be cautious when buying online.

• Do not disclose your personal Internet password.
• Think twice before giving out your social security number over the Internet.
• Shop with companies you know and trust.
• Use a secure browser that complies with industry standards, like Secure Hypertext Protocol (S-HTTP) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

Instead of money, spend time to plan and prepare.

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I will readily agree that most of the advice is plain common sense. But allow me to quote Josh Billings on this one:

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.

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Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius

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