Frugality

You can save money by walking instead of driving. The option of walking might be more feasible than you think. I used to think that it would take too long for me to walk to school.

My car needed repairs last week so I had to walk to school. I was pleasantly surprised that the walk only took about 20-25 minutes which is less than what I thought. I really should walk to school everyday. It would save gas and provide me with needed exercise.

Now that my car is fixed I should continue walking to school but it is too easy to drive. I didn’t walk today because it looked like it might rain. I can see myself making these types of excuses pretty often. What I discovered last week is that I don’t really need a car. When the option of driving is removed I find another way to get where I need to go. The only reason I can justify having a car now is that I might need it for my future job. When I get a job if the job doesn’t require me to have a car I might sell my car. This would save me money on gas,insurance, repairs, registration and whatnot. The drawback is my car isn’t worth much so the best way to get the full value out of my car is to drive it until it just won’t go any more. And the fact that I like the freedom of being able to hop in the car and drive somewhere whenever I feel like it. I just have to decide if the drawbacks are bigger than the money saving advantages.

There are many advantages of frugal living. One of them is apparent when making the switch to Daylight Saving Time. The only appliance I had to change the time on in my house was my alarm clock. I also had to set the time on my cell phone and car. My laptop updated automatically. My total time spent was probably about one minute.

I read an item in the paper about a guy who was complaining about having to change the time on many different appliances in his house. If he was living simply he wouldn’t have had that problem. That is just one example of how living simply has its advantages.

I received a mailer of coupons from Chick-fil-a in the mail yesterday. The coupons included ones for a free chicken sandwich and a free chicken biscuit. What made these a really good deal is that no purchase is necessary. I don’t have to spend any money to get my free sandwich.

This is where the dumpster diving comes in. Since this is such a good deal I wanted more coupons. There is a small trash can in front of my apartments mailboxes that people use to dump their junk mail. Digging through this trash can I found 5 more discarded mailers. It looks like I’ll be eating a lot of Chick-fil-a this month. I’ve dug through this trash can before to get Northwest Air coupons that I sold on eBay.

I call this dumpster diving lite because this trash can only contains discarded mail. That makes it pretty clean. I’ve never tried digging through the actual dumpster with people’s rotten food, dirty diapers, and such. It would probably take more than a free chicken sandwich to get me to dig through the garbage dumpster.

One thing about being poor and frugal is that most posts you see about frugal tips tell you things you are already doing or don’t apply to you. Hower you still come across a few new ideas now and then.

Worldwide Success had a post with 10 simple ideas to save thousands and The Simple Dollar had a post on 10 ways to save money this week. I decided to see how these would relate to my personal financial situation. I’ll list their idea and then my comments on it.
First is Worldwide Success‘s list. The title doesn’t really work for me. It is difficult to save thousand when you live on less than 10k a year.

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This is the third and final part of my series examining the question, I’m Frugal So Why Am I Poor?  You can find the first part here, and the second part here. The first reason for still being poor was insufficient income, the second reason was uncontrolled spending in certain areas.

The third reason I’m still poor is that I never had a plan to save. Even if you are frugal and have a decent income if you don’t have a plan to save or invest you will probably end up with nothing. Or at least with less than you would have had otherwise. If you don’t have a plan to invest part of your income you have a good chance of spending it all even if you are frugal. If you don’t spend it all but just leave the money in your checking account or a low-paying savings account you money is not going to grow nearly as much as it should. This is why you should have a plan to save a certain percentage of your income. The savings should come out of your income first. Then you need to invest that money so it can grow.

Just changing these three things should keep me from remaining poor. The sad thing is I’ve pretty much always known these things but just haven’t put them into action. It is now my goal to fix all three of these things this year and start getting ahead financially. I know I would be much better off if I would have started earlier but I just have to do the best I can now.