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Every once in a while I like to share simple things I do that I think are part of living a frugal life. Remember that being frugal isn’t just about cutting coupons and getting rock-bottom prices on groceries, although those are great ideas. You may find these frugal choices I made obvious, but the more I talk to people in my life, the more I realize that living frugally is not common and what seems normal to me because I’ve been doing it for years isn’t actually how most people choose to do things.
7 Frugal Choices I Made Last Week
My husband and I had a business meeting where we talked about finances. It took about 10 minutes. We looked at our recent spending, we talked about what to do with a recent windfall, and we made a plan for a summer trip. While this may not seem exceptionally frugal, I think being on the same page as your spouse is the only way to sustain a frugal life.
We had to make an spur-of-the-moment long afternoon trip in the car right after we got home to take another vehicle to the mechanic. I didn’t want to be far from home with hungry kids, so I took 5 minutes to make a bag of popcorn and then grabbed some cheese sticks. It helped pass the time in the car and we weren’t tempted to stop and buy snacks somewhere!
After our car was fixed at the mechanic, we asked if we could pay with a check. Our repair place stopped accepting checks a few years ago, but we have been loyal customers for years, and they know our checks won’t bounce. Paying with a check saved us almost $50 on the credit card fee they charge. (They do accept cash if you want to avoid the fee.) Even if you find yourself in this position and you don’t know the business well, it never hurts to ask. Frugal people are willing to risk someone saying no!
I planned meals from the freezer for the last few days of the month. I am not the kind of person who wants to completely use up my stockpile, but I do like to challenge myself sometimes because it keeps me from going into a store and it also makes sure I don’t forget what’s in the deep freezer.
The last three frugal choices I made last week had to do with a birthday celebration for one of my kids. The first choice was to spend some time talking to this kid about what they wanted. I told them we had a budget and we figured out a way to have the party they wanted while also sticking with our budget. While I know some people may think this takes the fun out of it for the kid, I think one of the best things parents can do is teach their kids about making choices like this. It’s not about removing the fun; it’s about finding a way to have fun while not spending more money than you have, a lesson they’ll be able to use for the rest of their lives!
Another frugal choice related to the birthday was that I asked a few friends to pitch in with food items for the party. These are very close friends who asked me if there was something they could do. Being frugal sometimes means asking for help. Letting one friend handle drinks and another bring several snack items meant we were able to stick to our budget. (And my friends love my child, so they considered this a gift to her!)
Finally, I made the frugal choice to order Walmart cupcakes. Some might argue that making your own cupcakes is the cheapest option, and you’re probably right. But frugal isn’t always cheapest. I asked ChatGPT to calculate the cost of making homemade cupcakes from scratch and homemade cupcakes from a boxed mix. For homemade cupcakes, the price was about $6 per dozen. For boxed mixes, the price was about $2 a dozen. I got 4 dozen custom cupcakes from Walmart for about $7.25 per dozen (about $29 total). While that is significantly more than the boxed mix, there are other costs to factor in: I don’t have a great way to transport 4 dozen cupcakes, so might have had to buy a carrier of some sort. I needed very specific frosting colors and would have had to buy food coloring. And finally, a cost we don’t often think about is time. How long would it take me to make 4 dozen cupcakes? My guess it would be about an hour of active work and at least one more hour of passive work (waiting for cupcakes to bake and cool). That’s 2 hours of my time. I spend $20 more on 4 dozen cupcakes but saved 2 hours of time — in this case, my time was worth $10/hour.
What frugal choices did you make this week? Let us know in the comments!
