How To Execute A Frugal Reboot When Old Spending Habits Appear

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Cutting costs, buying things at a deep discount, and bragging about how much money was saved is trendy. But let’s face it, it’s not always easy to maintain a high level of frugality, despite what some people on the internet want you to believe. Even though my husband and I try to live a frugal lifestyle, sometimes our old spendy habits appear. That’s when we know it’s time for a frugal reboot. I’m willing to bet you also find yourself in a similar situation from time to time, here’s how you can execute your own frugal reboot.   

Frugal living is a stark contrast from how I grew up in the 80s and 90s. When I was a kid it was cool to brag about how much money your parents spent on your new clothes or the latest gadget. As my spendy childhood faded, I found myself in the throws of adulthood with plenty of financial missteps under my belt. When Mr. MMM and I were planning our lives together we realized we needed a financial reboot and embraced frugality as part of our overall financial plan.

I gotta say, most of the time we’re great at not spending money or finding bargains, but sometimes we’re not. Sometimes, our old spending habits rear their ugly heads and we need to regroup.

As many of my longtime readers know, we just bought a new house and moved across town. Although we bought our house at a huge discount and saved money by employing a ton of DIY projects at the old house and the new one, we also fell into some of our old spendings habits. Think: eating out A LOT, buying stuff for our new digs, and just not sticking to our budget.

In light of watching these old spending habits creep into our lives, we realized that we’re still capable of messing up with money and needed to reboot our frugal mindset to get back on the financial independence train. We executed our frugal reboot in a series of 4 steps (seemed more official that way) that started with prioritization and ended with a family meeting. These steps are outlined below if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

Step #1: Prioritize Your Goals Or Make New Ones

Losing sight of your goals is easy when reaching them will take years. It’s important to sit down and remind yourself why you’re working so hard to save money for the future. Write down your goals again, reprioritize them, or even make new ones.

What we want out of life changes as we grow and experience new things. Perhaps the goals you had two years ago aren’t the same as the goals you have today. Shifting goals without a solid plan can easily allow you to lose financial focus.

We realized that moving (even though it was only 5 miles across town) was a major upheaval in our lives and was enough to disrupt our financial focus. When you’re shelling out cold hard cash for everything from movers to supplies for repairs to the old house and new floors for the new house, spending money on lunches and dinners out seems negligible, until it’s not. We found ourselves sitting in restaurants way more than we’re used to and, even though we love going out to eat, we also know this is a huge money suck for us and one that must be controlled.

Step #2: Map Out Your Progress

Depending on your goals, it can be hard to stay motivated and see your progress. This is especially true if your goals include paying off massive debt or won’t be realized for many years, as is the case if you’re saving for retirement.

The key to staying the course is to see the progress with your own two eyes. And that means tracking your net worth. The great thing about tracking your net worth is that, even if you’re paying down debt and can’t save anything right now, you’ll see your net worth go up! That’s right, you heard me. Whether you’re paying down debt or saving for the future, you’re going to see your net worth increase. And that’s a good feeling. We used this strategy when paying down our debt to stay motivated.

Our favorite online tool for budgeting and tracking net worth is Personal Capital (psst…that’s my affiliate link). It’s free, secure, and easy to set up and use.

Related: 

• That Time We Bought A Cedar Contemporary House At A Huge Discount
• Extreme Frugality Fatigue Is All It’s Cracked Up To Be
• How To Pay Off Your Credit Cards – When No One Wants To Help You

Step #3: Get Back To Your Budget Basics

When we found ourselves dropping $60 at the Olive Garden on a random Tuesday night for our little family of 3 we knew our budget was completely blown. Sure, we had moved and our lives, including our kitchen, were in complete disarray, but that really doesn’t warrant spending that kinda dough on that kinda food for no reason whatsoever other than convenience.

Making sure you stick to your budget is vital to reaching your financial goals, especially the long-term ones. If for some reason you’re finding it difficult to stick to your budget, maybe you’re not the problem, maybe your budget is.

It’s completely acceptable to re-do or readjust a budget from time to time as your life and goals change. Remember, your budget is fluid and you’re in control.

Step #4: Hold A Family Meeting

This last step is important for staying motivated and making sure everyone is still on the same financial page. When one or two people control the money in a family, it’s oftentimes easy for others like children to forget the “whys” behind being frugal and saving money. Holding a family meeting is a chance to refresh everyone’s memory and motivate them to stay on board. It’s also a great opportunity to present adjusted timelines or any goals that have changed.

And this doesn’t just apply to families. If you’re flying solo like I was for many years it’s still important to have a meeting with someone you trust to maintain your motivation and stay accountable.

Step #5: Consider a Side Hustle

It might be the case that it’s time to start considering a side hustle if your old spending habits appear. Of course, you should ideally try to curb them, but it doesn’t hurt to have a little bit of extra cash if you can manage to get it, right?

There are a number of options for side hustles such as blogging, investing, dog walking and so much more. It’s all about how much time you have to complete these tasks, whether you’ve got time to keep your eye on the news of usdc interest rates, if investing is the path you’ve gone down and so much more.

While we’re not encouraging you to spend more, we’re encouraging you to make more so that you don’t have to worry so much about what you’re spending. If this is something you’re interested in, it’s worth giving it a try.

And that’s it, how to execute a frugal reboot in 4 easy steps to help you stay motivated on your financial path.

Have you had difficulty staying committed to frugality? What did you do to stay motivated?