That’s Swell

72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life (via Worsted Witch) lead me to see 50 Tips for Living Frugally on Zen Habits. This is a great list of ideas, practical and useful (unlike some lists). So I thought I’d ‘copy’ the ideas and talk about which ones we’re doing. My responses and links are in italics. I left some of the authors original links in, they’re very beneficial!

1. Go with one car. We went to one car the beginning of August.
2. Go with a smaller house. We rent.
3. Go with a smaller car. We have a small Saturn, 35 mpg highway.
4. Rent rather than own. Here’s a more in-depth article. We rent!
5. Look for used first. Yes, yes, yes! We do this now, always look used first! I’m going to buy canning jars tonight that are used instead of new.
6. Eat out less. On our last ‘road trip’ home we didn’t eat out at all!
7. Eat out frugally. If you do eat out, check out these money-saving tips. If we do ever eat out, we do eat frugally…only water, no dessert, using coupons, etc.
8. Brown bag it to work. More here. Yes! We already do this.
9. Adopt a minimalist wardrobe. I’m not super minimalist, though I have been getting rid of a lot of clothes over the years (and not replacing them with something new), but when I see my friend’s closets, I suppose I am more minimalist then they are!
10. Stop online impulse buys. Since we don’t keep a credit card (ie all the money would come right out of our checking, money we don’t have), this isn’t a problem. But I struggled with this big time in college, I loved the thrill of winning auctions on Ebay and then getting mail.
11. Don’t shop. When we first started really ’sticking’ to our budget, I had to do this. We haven’t been to the mall in over a year!
12. Use a 30-day list. To curb impulse buys, create a 30-day list. Interesting idea, I’ve never tried it, though I have walked out of a store without buying something knowing if I really need it I’ll come back later.
13. Cut out cable. First we gave up cable, then TV all together.
14. Use the library. I just checked out several textbooks instead of buying them, I love our library!
15. Find free entertainment. Here are a few ideas. We haven’t been as lucky, but we do look for free things. Library movies are the most useful.
16. Frugal exercise. Here are some tips. We don’t exercise like we should. But we do bike, which is free.
17. Stay healthy. Since going to the Chiropractor and changing all of our eating habits, we’ve both been much healthier, I’ve gone from 6 medications to 1!
    
18. Commute by bike. I wish we could, but we live too far to bike, and the bus doesn’t even go to work.
19. Carpool or ride the bus. I take the bus every day to school!
    
20. Walk. The only thing close enough to walk to is our Chiropractor’s office, and we’ve done that several times.
21. Sell your clutter. Well, we have gotten rid of a lot of clutter, but not much of it was able to be sold. We did sell a TV, 2 PCs and a Mac Laptop this year…which helped, we used to have 4 computers!
22. Frugal gifting. Here are some ideas. I have always been a frugal gift giver, but now more than ever – by August I already have half our shopping done for Christmas!
23. Quit smoking. Here are tips for quitting. We have never smoked.
24. Alcohol in moderation. We cut alcohol out of grocery budget.
25. Sweets in moderation.We used to always have Sour Patch Kids, Twizzlers, Oreos, etc. around to eat, we don’t do that anymore. Though I love to bake homemade goodies!
26. Drink water. Here are some tips for forming the water habit. I switched to drinking water out of a reusable water bottle – I love it! I used to always drink Diet Coke. No more soda for me (and rarely anything but water!). At home we only make water and iced tea.
27. Batch your errands. With one car, this happens naturally…for example, tonight we are going to the Chiropractor, Library and Thrift Store (to buy canning jars), we normally do 2-3 errands all at once.
28. Stay home. We do stay at home a lot, in fact we like to invite others over to our home!
    
29. Stop using credit cards. Yes! We did this! No more credit cards!
30. Cancel subscriptions. We canceled Netflix a while ago…and our subscriptions come as Christmas presents.
31. Make your own. We make all our foods now…even milk and cereals!
32. Do it yourself. We live in an apt, so repairs are done by maintenance, and we don’t know anything about cars…but I do know how to cook and “do it myself” – ie we make our own frozen pizzas now.
33. Stop paying interest. The only debt we have is student loans.
34. Reduce convenience foods. We also did this. No more frozen dinners (unless I make them!).
    
35. Travel frugally. We do this! Our last vacation was only $300 total – plane tickets and everything, we booked tickets with David’s brother who works for an airline (only $100 round trip for both of us to Kansas City) and we stayed with my brother in KC!
36. Cut the cell phone. We thought about this, going to 1 phone (instead of 2, one for each of us). But we don’t have a home phone, and to be safe (especially with me commuting to school) it seemed best to keep both phones. We did just switch to a new carrier which saves us $10 a month and gives us nationwide (no roaming), so that helps.
37. Cut your own hair. This is the first one I’ve found we don’t do. We do however get cheap haircuts. Mine is $20, David’s is $10. And I go 2-3 months between haircuts, I just let it grow out then get it cut pretty short again. David goes at least a month, maybe a month and half – so we do like pretty shaggy a lot, but it works! And I gave up highlights. That saved a lot of money!
    
38. Maintain stuff. We keep up on regular car maintenance. Everything else we’d ‘maintain’ is in our apt. that we rent.
39. Save energy. Try these tips. We have been doing major changes to unplug unnecessary items when not in use, turn of the AC/Heat, etc. Last month it reduced our energy bill from $80 to $60!
40. Save gas. Try these tips. We do all that we can, I take the bus to school now (only $1.30 a day instead of $6-9 in gas).
41. Only buy bargain clothing (when you need clothes). If I have to buy something new (which is rare, we buy used first), I always look for bargains. I can’t remember the last time I paid full price for something. We have some great outlet malls close too.
42. Telecommute. I guess you could count David’s freelance work as telecommuting, he does it all from our home office.
    
43. Plan ahead. I never though I’d be such a planner. Everything has to be planned out. We have to pack our lunches the night before, I even lay out my clothes the night before! I have to plan to make the bus on time, etc. We even do meal plans.
44. Cook ahead. I have been doing this a lot, I cook on the weekends to last the whole week.
45. Wash clothes less. I have been working on this a lot, trying to wear things more than once. It’s been working well!
46. Sun-dry clothes. We line dry nearly everything (except large blankets/sheets since I have no where to hang them). They’re no ’sun dried’ but they hang dry in our apt! (our manager said we can’t put clothes on the porch to dry).
47. Eat less meat. This has been a great money-saver for us. We only buy 10 lbs. or less of ground beef a month – and that’s it.
48. Save on groceries. See more here. We have cut our grocery bill from $300-$350 a month to about $160-200. And it’s all organic!
49. Frugal Christmas. Here are some great ways to do that, and here are some more. Last Christmas we significantly reduced what we spent on each other and others, we’ll do it even more this year (especially what we spend on each other).
50. Eat a cheap breakfast. Here are some great ones. We make our own cereal (granola) now and eat a lot of oatmeal, so it’s cheap!