Frugality

Frugality and Quality of Life

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After reading a post at The Simple Dollar on quality of life and consumer spending it made me think of my own views regarding quality of life and frugality.

In the post Trent argues that consumer purchases do not increase your quality of life. I agree with that to a point. The examples in the post included going out for lunch and seeing a move. Both of these are things I regularly indulge in and I do believe they raise my quality of life.

That does not mean that my quality of life would go down if I didn’t do them though. When I go on my hike I won’t be eating out for lunch very often and will rarely be seeing a movie. I expect my quality of life will be even higher then than it is now.

The difference to me is that I will be choosing to give up those indulgences. I won’t be forced to give them up. This goes to my underlying philosophy of frugality which is that frugality is about choosing to do less expensive things not depriving yourself of things.

Being Frugal Doesn't Equal Being a Tightwad

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I found this article on how the recession affects frugal people interesting.  It details how some frugal people are becoming even more frugal because of the recession while others are discovering frugality.  It even had a mention of BeingFrugal.net which is a great blog on frugality.

I do object to them calling frugal people cheapskates and tightwads though.  I suppose I don’t have much room to object given that I use the name Tight Fisted Miser.  The name is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and I am not sure if the article intends their labels in the same way.  One person in the article did refer to himself as a cheapskate.  Overall though I think the headline equating tightwads and cheapskates with being frugal sends a negative message.  I see frugality as a positive, not a negative, regardless of whether there is a recession.

The American Dream on a Shoestring

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The sixth chapter of Your Money or Your Life deals with frugality. The original version contains 101 frugality tips. I understand that the new version doesn’t have these tips but has a more general discussion on frugality.  This wasn’t an area where I really needed any help but I enjoy reading other’s frugal ideas.  And I guess a few people enjoy reading my frugal ideas or they wouldn’t be reading this blog.  Since the orginal version of this came out there are now tons of blogs and sites dealing with the topic of frugality.  If you want to read more about frugality after reading this chapter of Your Money or Your Life there is plenty of material out there to read.

Hiking on $200 a Month

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If you’ve been reading this blog for a while than you probably already know that I plan on doing a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail starting in May. The trail is 2,178 miles and goes through 14 states starting at Springer Mountain in Georgia and ending at Mt. Katahdin in Maine. The trail will take me about five months to hike.

The cost of hiking the trail used to be pegged at about $1 a mile. Reading forums about the trail most people think that figure is now too low and consider $3-4,000 to be more accurate. My plan is to hike on $200 a month for a total of $1000 for the hike. This is much cheaper than most people hike but I live much cheaper than most people when I’m not hiking so I should be able to do the same on the trail. I have hike about a 1000 miles of the trail so I know what to expect. Hiking on $1000 is doable but it will not be easy.

My expenses will be broken down roughly to $100 a month for food and $100 a month for everything else. Hostels, motels, laundry, showers, gear replacement, entertainment, and such will comprise the everything else. The gear I start the trail with and my transportation expenses to and from the trail heads will not be included in my $200 a month budget. My GF will visit me a few time along the trail and expenses for those visits will not be included in my budget either. I think $200 a month is a realistic budget but if I find it isn’t enough or it is making my hike no fun I will increase the budget.

I will also have expenses back home such as my health insurance and cell phone but these will not be part of my hiking budget. I plan to still tally my total monthly expenses and will post those when I’m able. I expect my overall monthly expenses will shrink significantly.

I should be able to get on the Internet once a week or so and will update my blog then. I am going to keep track of everything I spend on the trail and will post those expenses. I will also repost some of my old posts and hopefully have some guest posts to keep new content on this blog. Hopefully, most of you will find my trail journey interesting enough to keep reading.

More Extreme Frugal Housing Options

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Continuing where I left off on yesterday’s post here are some more extremely frugal housing options.  They are not quite as frugal as the previous options but still much less expensive than average.

One option would be to buy a small house in a small town.  In the town my mom lives in it is possible to buy a small, old home for less than $25,000.  I’m sure the same is true for many areas of the country.  You could even buy a house for less than that here in Kansas City.  The house might not be inhabilitable and the neighbord wouldn’t likely be one you would want to live in though.  I think this could be a viable option if I could find the right small town.

Another option would be to rent or buy a large house and rent out all the rooms individually.  My best friend has lived in houses like this on a few occassions.  It definitely kept his rent down.  He lived in the SF Bay Area last year and was only paying $400 a month for a room.  This option doesn’t really appeal to me though because I value my privacy too much.  There is also the occassional hassle of roommates that are late paying rent, are messy, and such.  The cost savings are not worth the drawbacks to me.

A less extreme option would be to rent a small house or apartment.  There are small rental houses across the street from us that are only $600 a month.  That would be just $300 each for my GF and me. The drawback to this option is that those rents will eventually increase.  I would only consider this option as a temporary measure while preparing to transition to one of the other options.

It looks like the RV option is the most popular among the readers so far.  It isn’t really a good option here though since lot rent would be almost as much as renting a house or apartment.  None of these options will happen until at least next year but I like to have some options in mind.