I have to be honest, when I first stumbled upon personal finance blogs around 4 years ago, I was smitten. The idea that I could achieve Financial Independence (FI) before I turned gray or needed a walker piqued my curiosity big time. So much so, that I started this blog to chronicle my family’s financial journey.
In light of our new financial goal, incorporating extreme frugality seemed like an obvious step in the right direction. But, buyer beware, extreme frugality fatigue IS definitely all it’s cracked up to be. Turns out, selective frugality is way more enjoyable and a much better fit for us.
So far, I’ve tried every gimmick in the books to help my family cross the FI finish line as quickly as possible. One such tool often touted by the internet die-hards is extreme frugality. I mean let’s face it, cutting expenses is a fast way to free up some money to pay down debt and invest. It’s much faster than getting a better job and easier than starting a second one. And cutting expenses by being extreme (*ahem* extreme frugality) will squeeze every cent possible out of your inflated budget.
Operation Extreme Frugality
Falling in love with the concept of financial independence/retire early (FIRE), prompted me to scour the world wide web for all the tips and tricks to reach that newfound goal. What I found was that a whole lot of people seemed to be employing extreme frugality as one of their main catalysts.
Since there is wiggle room in most people’s budgets, and I considered us to be most people, I figured my family would give extreme frugality a go.
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Extreme Frugality Employment But Not Enjoyment
Let me be clear, although I didn’t exactly grow up in a frugal-lovin’ household, I have always been selectively frugal when it came to handling my money as an adult. So the idea of making the leap from selective to extreme frugality didn’t scare me. In my opinion, we wouldn’t really feel the pinch. I was wrong.
My husband, on the other hand, did grow up in a very frugal family so he was used to it and always thought we could do better with our money. So he was all for making the extreme switch and didn’t think it would affect us at all. He was also wrong.
Extreme Frugality Measures
We soon made the shift and cut our budget to the bone. Here is a list of expenses we slashed to be accepted into the exclusive Extreme Frugality Club…
Cut the cable:
Let’s face it, cutting the cable is a hallmark sign of being committed to extreme measures, especially for members of Generation X. Getting cable TV was a big deal in our house when I was a kid. I can remember going to elementary school with a kid who lived in an enormous stone farmhouse and all anyone ever said about him was that his family didn’t have a TV. No TV meant no cable. And that meant you were weird.
I’m sure my classmate’s childhood, without the influence of a boob tube, was more enlightening than mine but the fact remains, he didn’t have a TV. And that made him weird to me and every other kid in my class. Aside from that one kid, having cable pretty much the norm for everyone in the 80s and 90s.
Then came big screen plasma TVs and the introduction of HDTV with supreme cable packages. When plasma televisions burst onto the scene, the idea of having one without an HDTV supreme cable package seemed silly. This was obviously before the death of cable and the rise of subscription-based television.
When I found myself single again in 2007, after almost a decade of being in a longterm relationship, one of the first things I purchased for my new life was one of those new plasma TVs. I was also paying upwards of $200/month (internet included) to have the best HDTV experience with that new TV.
After a few years in that apartment, I upgraded to the house we currently live in. Having only $200 left in my bank account after closing on the house prompted me to cut back on the cable. But as things go, I soon received a sizable raise at work and my finances started to loosen up a bit. That meant I could afford that HDTV package again for my plasma. No more Redbox for me, I could live large again just like we did back in the 80s.
Unfortunately, that ultimate HDTV package was the first thing to be chopped from our budget in order to put us in the fast lane to FI. I happily made the call and before I knew it, we were a TV-less family aside from our Netflix subscription.
Our little girl was very little at that point so she didn’t know what happened and didn’t really miss it. We did OK too. Sure, there were shows that I really enjoyed watching that were suddenly ripped out of my life, but it was all good. I found other things to occupy my time – like this blog.
The first line item to be cut was a success. We weren’t really missing cable and we were saving more money. How much money? Oh, probably around $100/month. At the height of our cable addiction, we were paying around $190/month. Since we couldn’t dump internet access, we were and still are locked into paying around $90/month for it.
The turning point:
One Thanksgiving morning I couldn’t access the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it was super important to me that my little girl watch the parade as we cooked up the bird in preparation for a family-filled day of feasting.
We must’ve tried everything under the fall sun that morning to watch the parade, but everything we tried failed. Call me silly, but I have always been in love with the holidays and nostalgic about certain things. One of those things is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I wanted my daughter to experience the same type of Thanksgiving morning that I remembered as a child, but because we were trying to save a few extra bucks, she wasn’t able to. Not only did we all miss having the parade that day, but we also spent about an hour being irritated and agitated in our futile attempts.
Although we didn’t actually sign back up for full-fledged cable, we did subscribe to YouTube TV and are now paying $49/month for all the channels we used to have with cable. And I must say, I’m really happy to have TV back in my life. Our Thanksgiving was absolutely enjoyable this year!
Even though we’re back to paying for TV again, we’re being selectively frugal about it and we’re still paying less than we would be for cable.
Clothes-buying ban:
Ahh, the ever-popular clothes-buying ban. I wrote an entire post about this so I won’t rehash the whole thing here. But if you happen to be a new reader, I’ll give you a brief synopsis.
Even though I was never a huge shopper, I felt impelled to start my own clothes-buying ban a few years ago. It lasted about a year and a half and it wasn’t awful, but that’s certainly not a rave.
The turning point:
There were many times during those 18 months when I wanted to buy a new shirt or a pair of boots but couldn’t break the commitment I made to not buy ANY clothes (or shoes). Whenever I felt the bug to buy something new during the ban but I had to deny myself, the excitement I initially felt about the financial challenge quickly turned to a feeling of deprivation.
When I finally pulled the plug on the ban, I rewarded myself with a small shopping spree. And although I didn’t spend much money on the spree (approximately $200), I probably spent about the same amount as I would’ve spent over the course of the 18 months without the deprivation. If I just would’ve allowed myself to buy a new shirt or new boots when I wanted them, I wouldn’t have felt deprived for over a year. Oh well, you live and you learn.
One car living:
We attempted to live as a one-car family even though we had two cars in the garage. If our venture turned out to be a success, we were going to sell our second car and bank the cash. Since Mr. MMM works mostly from home we thought it wouldn’t be too hard. Once again, we were wrong.
Almost daily it seemed like we failed to live as a one-car family. Inevitably, Mr. MMM would need to take our daughter to school or pick her up to accommodate some sort of appointment. If it wasn’t an appointment it was a trip to the grocery or hardware store that prompted the use of our second vehicle.
Initially, we were bummed that we were failing as a one-car family and failing to save all the money that people who actually were one-car families seemed to be saving. Then, as we often do, we took a step back to analyze the situation.
The turning point:
We realized that both of our vehicles were paid off. Whether we used the second vehicle during the day while I was at work or waited until I got home to use the car we were supposed to use full-time, it really didn’t make a difference, financially.
Either our two cars would last a long time or we’d need to replace one of them much sooner since we were using it for everything. Gas costs and wear and tear stayed the same whether we used a single car or both cars.
Sure, we have to pay another annual inspection and registration for the second car, but that is a minimal price to pay for the convenience it affords us. If you compare that cost to the cost of a few Uber/Lyft rides in the event of an emergency, keeping both cars actually saves us money in the long run.
Since we didn’t have any car payments, it didn’t make financial sense for us to put this unattainable and extremely annoying limit on ourselves. And in the end, it certainly wouldn’t have saved us any money to ditch our second car. So we kept it, and we have no plans of trying to become a one-car family with two careers and a child ever again.
Ditched restaurants and fast food:
I’ve discussed this topic ad nauseum over the years but it still deserves to be glossed over in this section. Eating out has always been my financial nemesis. I absolutely LOVE it.
And when my husband and I started dating, I ramped it up. New love = a lot of eating out. At least it did for us. I was certainly happy to engage in this frivolous financial behavior and so was the future Mr. MMM.
When we finally got serious about boosting our saving rate via extreme frugality, we knew we had to cut out restaurants and fast food. We even stopped going out for coffee. We did this for quite some time and it was a real struggle.
The turning point:
We started to change our tune about nixing restaurants and coffee when we started to feel unhappy about always saying no to even the smallest expenditures. We’re two people making decent money; we shouldn’t have to deprive ourselves of every little thing just to save a little more money each month.
Crossing the FI finish line isn’t a race. It’s a journey to be enjoyed.
Now we go out when we want to go out, but we’re extremely intentional about how often and how much we spend. Sometimes we splurge if there’s something to celebrate and other times it’s just a pizza pie fresh outta the oven.
DIY lifestyle:
After trying to do everything ourselves to save even more money, we decided that sometimes hiring out a job is money well spent.
Case in point, I wanted to paint the ceilings in our small home a bright white. I had lived with the contractor-grade eggshell for far too long and was ready for the change. So I took a week of vacation from work and spent it painting all of the ceilings in our house except for the vaulted ceiling straddling the great room.
The turning point:
I knew I could paint the vaulted ceiling but after spending a week painting the rest of the ceilings, my body was exhausted. My neck ached, my hand was cramping, and I felt like I was getting sick. So we decided to hire it out. I believe it cost us a few hundred dollars but I can tell you that money was well spent and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
There were certainly other areas that we slashed as well, but I think you get the idea. No budgetary line item was safe in our efforts to increase our savings rate.
Guilty Pleasures
Ah, guilty pleasures, we all have them whether we’re willing to admit them or not.
So how in the world is my family able to save money toward financial independence when I eagerly and unapologetically admit to liking the finer things in life?
Enter selective frugality…
-I’m all about having my hair cut in a high-end facility, but I do it less frequently than my stylist suggests and I usually don’t get color.
-Before buying new clothes I’ll raid my own closet to see what I have that I haven’t worn in a long time.
-Instead of having a standing appointment to get my nails done twice a month, I only have them done occasionally or for special events.
-As far as living quarters go, my house has high-end finishes and upgrades, but it’s also quite small compared to American standards. This saves BIG on everything from the mortgage to taxes to utilities.
-We take advantage of my employer-sponsored retirement account and max it out each year. Selective frugality allows us to max this out and also fund our IRAs. These are also big financial wins propelling us toward our ultimate goals.
Bottom line: When it comes to extreme frugality: We came, we tried, we moved on for a more enjoyable financial journey.
Related:
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- What To Do When You Realize Frugality Won’t Make You Rich
- I’m Not Working My Ideal Job. And I’m Okay With That
- The Latte Factor: Why I Started Buying Lattes Again And Why I Don’t Feel Guilty
Extreme Frugality Fatigue
I don’t know about you, but when I scroll through social media and read popular headlines, I often feel obligated to optimize every facet of my life. If I’m not working a side hustle or hacking a better, faster, cheaper way to do everything, I’m obviously not doing it right.
Extreme frugality fatigue hit us like a ton of bricks and we started to lose focus of our longterm goal because we weren’t enjoying the life we were living to get there. We weren’t enjoying the present. In my opinion, living only for tomorrow is no way to live.
Realizing that we were missing out on some basic experiences with each other and our daughter was reason enough for us to ditch the extreme measures and switch back to our normal way of life. For us, that normal way of life is selective frugality.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with using extreme frugality as a tool to reach financial independence. It’s just not right for our family.
Switching Back To Selective Frugality
The best part about personal finance is that it’s personal. We’re certainly not ditching our longterm goal of financial independence or turning our backs on being frugal. In fact, we’re embracing both. We’re just embracing both in the best way possible for our family and our lives.
Could we be saving a boatload more if we kept our noses to the grindstone and continued on the path of extreme frugality? You betcha. But as you are likely aware, it’s not just about the balance sheet. It’s about balance. I only have one shot at this life and only so much time to spend with the people I love most. In light of that, I’m opting to optimize our time and money in a way that benefits us all without sacrificing our present or our future.
Don’t worry, I’m still going to super glue my boots back together (multiple times) before buying a new pair. But I’m also going to wear those boots into our favorite pizza shop on Friday nights to celebrate the start of the weekend.
What’s your opinion of extreme frugality?
18 Comments
Believe, in the long run, that selective frugality works better. I still go out to eat but much less often and usually it is to lunch versus dinner so costs less. I have my hair cut at nice salon but do L’Oreal in a box hair coloring. I go clothes shopping at thrift shoes in the wealthy sections of my metro city. I’ve gotten a $400 Coach purse that did not look like it had ever been used for $100 and that was a big splurge for me. I usually find high quality clothes for very little money. Frankly, there are some friends that I go out with much less than other friends because the bill will be much higher. Those expensive friends, I try to have dinner at home with. It is all about balance and not feeling deprived.
That was quite a score on the Coach bag! Yeah, I often prefer nicer things but am totally fine with acquiring them used. Balance is best. 🙂
Selective frugality is probably a good idea, if you can afford it. However, please keep in mind that many people cannot afford the luxuries you described—expensive haircuts, manicures, eating out, new clothes, a second car. The lifestyle you describe is an upper middle class lifestyle. I expect most people aiming for FIRE are in this income bracket.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Laurie! You’re absolutely right that selective frugality really only applies if you’re making a certain level of income to begin with. I certainly wasn’t born into an upper middle class family so I know exactly how it feels when frugality isn’t selective.
Money I save in one area can and is used in other areas. My husband doesn’t do cable TV, he put up an antenna on the roof and we get 26 crystal clear channels, except in stormy weather, then a couple get wacky. But the antenna was $50, and there is no monthly subscription service fees. All the local and major networks, even though we don’t watch much tv. We have Netflix that is included with the cell phone service and cable internet only. We mow our own lawn, clear snow and do all our own yard work. He did pay for a steel roof for the house last year, that will outlast us.
I don’t do the hair salon, high end or budget chains. I got a really bad haircut from a higher end salon and went over a year before I had my hair cut again. And who cut it? My new boyfriend, now husband that I had just started dating. He did a great job trimming and shaping my hair, it did take a few more months to grow to where I was happy with it, but the salon stylist left me with basically a mullet with a mushroom shape on top and disconnected too thinned out layers. I have not been back to the salon since being he does a better job cutting my hair than the salon did. It is frugal getting my hair cut every 2-3 months for free and I get compliments on my hair as well. I think I am getting really great results as a couple friends had a string of bad salon haircuts and asked who did mine as it always looked so good. When I told them my guy cuts my hair, their response was can he cut mine for me? And he has been giving regular haircuts to one friend and the other sporadically. Hubby also gives my boys their monthly haircuts as well. Same reason, bad haircuts at the barbershop I was tired of paying for. I bought the clippers, but my skills are not good, so my boys fired me and it became hubby’s job. I am still savings hundreds a year on my hair plus hundreds more having hubby do the barbering.
We have a garden with fruit trees, berry bushes, plants and I also plant vegetables. Hard work, but I get well over a grand in savings on fruit alone, plus I know we are getting healthy food without being laced with toxic pesticides, I can and freeze as well. I put over 30 gallon bags of blueberries in the freezer last year that I use in baking and take in my lunches. This year I am doing pasta sauces and freezing pesto again. Great savings.
Nice work on selective frugality!
My husband shaves his head so we’re definitely saving money on haircuts in his department. As far as my high-end salon goes, I think I only go around 4 times/year. If it gets too long in between, I’ll opt for a bang trim which is only a few bucks. I’ve tried it myself more times than I can count and I still can’t seem to do it right.
I’m envious of your gardening adventures. Unfortunately, that’s not in the cards for me. But, our neighbor has a lush garden that bigger than his house. The best part…he’s more than thrilled to share with us. It’s a total frugal win!
we’ve never done the fruglality to extreme. we still have satellite tv and buy a lot of good wine. we do a few frugal elements: mrs. smidlap cuts my hair and hers. hers is longish and curly and very forgiving and even if she makes a little mistake she is still cooler than everybody else. we stopped eating out unless we’re on vacation. she goes out without me with friends sometimes but once we learned to cook well the quality is similar and the wine is better at home. i really started to care what crowd i had to sit among in a bar/restaurant anyhow. i got to be a curmudgeon at a young age i guess.
Oh my gosh, I love that you called yourself a curmudgeon. I, too, have adopted that term lately. 🙂 Nice work on being selectively frugal. It sounds like you have built a very nice life for yourself doing the things you enjoy and not scrimping until it hurts.
I wholeheartedly agree with the selective frugality mindset. Cut the frivolous expenditures and live within your means. As I tell my kids, you need to Be Here Now. Live in the moment and enjoy the experiences of life with those you love. You never know when the minutes you have been given will run out.
Yes, yes, and yes!! Thank you for your thoughtful comment!
Great read. We too have become much more balanced over the years. I do think extreme frugality could be important for someone just starting out (maybe out of college). If you can make large gains early on, you can really use that as a launch pad to start your path. I still struggle with some of the crazy markups at restaurants, but we selectively only hit up those restaurants during happy hour : )
Have a good weekend. Max OOP.
Extreme frugality does have its place. But I think, as you mentioned, it’s better for short stints as opposed to the long haul.
P.S. We also love cheap happy hours. Cheers!
Good one
Thanks!
I stick with the motto “be mindfully satisfied not completely deprived”. As long as I am mindful of my spending choices I can spend on the things I care about and ignore the stuff I don’t. I don’t want to follow a plan that is painful, because quite frankly, if it is too painful I know I won’t follow it. In fact, if I have any regrets in life its that I didn’t spend enough on my path to financial independence. I’ve reached FI, but looking back there are times I should have spent more money.
That is wonderful insight for anyone chasing FI. Thank you for sharing! It’s so true that not spending enough on the way to FI means you might not enjoy your life along the way.
By identifying where I spent money then linking it my feelings at the time has shifted my perspective from seeking happiness to one of wholeness.
Wholeness simply means complete, lacking nothing, entire, undivided and uninjured. It evolves, gives and is regenerative. Wholeness “becomes” rather than “strives” and by default it naturally purges itself from impurities, through ones thoughts and actions.
In the past my pursuit for happiness was a roller coaster of emotions that left me exhausted, burnt out and depressed.
Today I am inspired to exercise daily because it make me feel more whole.
thanks for sharing with us ^_^