Frugal Tips

Some thoughts of frugality

October 11, 2008 by Allison · Leave a Comment

Hello Everyone! I would like to take a few minutes to introduce myself. My name is Allison and I blog over at Living Frugal (http://www.frugalityexplored.blogspot.com). I started my journey there in the beginning of the summer shortly after my youngest was born in April. My goal in the beginning was to help other mothers and families save money on their groceries. I love writing, so this was a great idea.

Being frugal is a lifestyle choice. It’s not something that you are born with, but it is something that is learned and that takes time to master. It is usually something that you learn from family, but sometimes you have to learn it out of necessity. No matter how you came to the realization that a frugal lifestyle is the life for you, there is always room for learning and improvement.

Unless you grew up with a frugal lifestyle, becoming frugal takes time. When I first decided I wanted to look into a frugal lifestyle, I wasn’t even sure where to start. A dear friend of mine pointed me to coupons and taught me how to save money. Since then I have learned that there is so much more to being frugal.

In the beginning I would buy a bunch of things just because I could get them cheap or FREE. At the time having lots of things was really cool. Now I have realized that those things even if they were cheap were cluttering my life and taking time away from my family. Now I only buy things that we will use or that I can give away to somebody in need. I believe will all of my heart that being frugal also means sharing the frugal things in our life. In some cases I’ll buy things that are money makers, but that’s a story for a different day.

When I first started blogging I came up with a definition for frugal, I would like to share it with you: “Living as to minimize the outflow of time and money in order to maximize the retention of both allowing for optimum use of assets.” In other words if something is really cheap, but doing it takes an astronomical amount of my time, and my other choice is something that cost more, but takes little to no time, I’m likely to consider the more costly item because time equals money to me.

To me being frugal is a constant battle between cost verses time. When we first got married I could cut and prep food very quickly, but as our family grew, which it did rather quickly, I soon realized that the frugal choice was to bite the bullet and buy a nice food processor. It has saved me so much time and allowed me to have more time to spend with my children. It has actually saved me money too because I don’t feel the need to buy things such as precut hash browns or shredded cheese. Do you know how long it would take to shred enough for 9 people?

My point talking about this is to show you that being frugal isn’t just about saving money and having more stuff. It’s a lifestyle choice where you say, “there is only one of me, I’m going to work to the best of my ability to maximize all of my resources.”