Recently, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about some of the things I write about here on The Simple Dollar. Even though she’s struggling with some serious debt issues, she told me flatly that she didn’t want to take most of the advice given on The Simple Dollar. When I asked her why, she breathed in deep and told me the following (paraphrased):

I don’t want to be a “frugal” person. I don’t want to be the person who is no fun because I’m always chasing every dime and I’m always vetoing the fun things to do. I don’t want to be the person that leaves out cheap toilet paper for guests. I don’t want to just sit at home every night cackling as I count my pennies. I want to have a life.

First of all, it’s clear from these statements that my friend puts a great deal of value on how she appears to others. She desires an active and vibrant social life, to the point where it would seem that it’s one of the central values in her life. She wants to spend a lot of time with her friends and family – the people she cares the most about.

Hand in hand with that central desire is a desire to not alienate them through penny pinching. She aims to keep the people in her social circle happy and she wants to be involved in whatever things come along.

Both of those things are completely fine – in fact, they’re a healthy part of an extroverted personality (in moderation, of course). The problem here is that having a social life and being frugal are far from contradictory, as my friend likes to believe.

Let’s look at each of the comments.

I don’t want to be the person who is no fun because I’m always chasing every dime.
The statement here implies that she thinks she won’t be enjoyable for others to hang out around if she chases every dime. In response to that, I would simply say that most of the benefits of frugality come from choices made when no one else is around. Buying light bulbs isn’t a social event, nor is setting up an emergency fund. Grocery and household supply shopping isn’t a social event, either. Yet those are the times when many of the money-saving choices are made.

If your social experience is a key value for you, don’t cut back on it. Instead, focus on the multitude of things going on in your life that aren’t subject to social constraints.

I don’t want to be the person who is no fun because I’m always vetoing the fun things to do.
Simple. Don’t veto the fun things to do.

In fact, why not be the one who suggests fun things to do? In your spare time, think of some things that would be genuinely fun for the people in your social circle and then do some research on how to do them inexpensively. Then, when it comes time to plan a social event, pipe up with your idea. Not only will it be cheaper than throwing yourself into something without any forethought, but if you put your mind to it at other times, you’re likely to come up with some brilliant ideas to boot. You actually won’t be the downer – instead, you’ll be the person who comes up with the good ideas.

I don’t want to be the person that leaves out cheap toilet paper for guests.
Then don’t leave out cheap toilet paper for guests.

If you have multiple bathrooms in your home, designate one as the bathroom that guests use and stock it with the finest toiletries. Then, use the other bathroom yourself and use generics in there. It’s a room that’s just yours – no one else will ever use it. Since the guest bathroom will likely be used less than the one you regularly use, you’ll buy a lot more of the inexpensive stuff than the expensive stuff, trimming your budget quite easily.

Again, it’s all about what’s a personal value to you, and being a good hostess is an important value to her.

I don’t want to just sit at home every night cackling as I count my pennies.
Then don’t sit at home every night cackling as you count your pennies.

There are countless things to do all over the place that don’t require a major outlay of money. Take a serious look around your community. Look at the community calendar. Find out about the many things your city’s parks and recreation department has to offer.

Frugality is not about sitting at home and counting your pennies. It’s all about figuring out what exactly you want out of life, then doing exactly that while minimizing the cost of it. The pieces of your life that aren’t part of that picture of exactly what you want out of life are the parts you can trim.

If you value your social life, then focus on your social life. The rest of your life are the areas where you can cut. If you have a calendar that’s full of social activities every night, do you really need cable or a land telephone line? If you thrive on your friends and family, why not think ahead and come up with things that are a blast and save all of you a few bucks over the regular price of admission? And on those rare occasions when you are home, you don’t really need a flat panel television and thousands of dollars’ worth of decorations when the core value of your life is outside the home. Decorate tastefully and take your time with it to find bargains on things you actually want.

Being social is not the opposite of being frugal. They often go hand in hand.

This is part of an ongoing series about how to trim the budget of the average American. As this series focuses on such broad-based tips, some will work for you and some will not. You’re invited to mention in the comments the tips that you found to be the most useful for inclusion in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of this series.

Personal Care – $588

Personal care is an area where you don’t “win” by cutting things out. Keep yourself clean. Brush your teeth. Basic hygiene keeps you clean and keeps you presentable, too.

Yet, even here, there are ways to trim a little bit of spending without affecting your cleanliness or appearance. Here are a few tactics worth considering.

Don’t buy grooming products at your local salon/barber shop. Even if they have the “perfect” product for you, don’t buy it there. The mark-up is often out of this world. Instead, jot down the product name (if that’s the one you must have) or the type of product, go home, and do your own research. Even if you decide you do need it, you can find the product cheaper elsewhere – and you’re still supporting a local business by using their services.

Don’t be afraid to try the lower-cost brands. I used to believe my hair needed certain products to look good. Now I usually use Pert Plus or, sometimes, whatever happens to be on sale. It looks fine – and I would have never known this if I hadn’t tried it to begin with. Give the low-cost brands a try – you might be surprised to find that your hair is just fine. Of course, this isn’t always true – if that’s the case, don’t hestitate to immediately switch back to what works.

Yes, it’s true here, too – bulk buying and coupons work. Once you’ve identified products that work for you, buy them in large quantities, ideally with the aid of a coupon. I always buy three-packs of deodorant, three packs of toothpaste, enormous jugs of shampoo, and the like. It’s significantly cheaper per use.

Cut down (or cut out entirely) the perfume and/or cologne. Sure, it’s fine for a date, but for day-to-day use, it’s not worth it. It often sends the wrong social signal and some people don’t appreciate the smell at all – or even have allergies. Use deodorant and keep yourself clean and you’re fine for day to day purposes.

Cut down on the cosmetics, too. The only reason someone should wear cosmetics is if it improves their self-confidence. If you’re not getting that, don’t invest the time or the money in cosmetics for daily use. Most of the time, people look great without it.

Read the directions. You need surprisingly little shampoo or conditioner to clean your hair. You need surprisingly little toothpaste to clean your teeth. If you have a habit of using more than just a dab of any product, read the directions and make sure you’re not over-using. If you’re using three times as much as you should, you’re buying three bottles for every one you actually need to buy.

Get the last little bit out. When the toothpaste tube seems empty, put the cap back on and cut off the bottom – you can still squeeze out a surprising amount. When the shampoo or conditioner run low, turn them upside down and leave them that way for a day – you’ll get another couple of washes. Don’t just throw away perfectly good stuff – that’s the same as throwing cash out the door.

Make your own – when it works. One great example is hand sanitizer – just mix one cup of aloe vera (it’s not too expensive, even if you have to buy it – even better if it’s free because you have access to a plant), one half cup of isopropyl alcohol, and a drop or two of an essential oil you like. Mix well, put it in a squirt bottle, and you have a much cheaper alternative to Purell that’s basically the exact same thing. You can make your own versions of many such things, like toothpaste (seriously, just mix half a cup of baking soda, a tiny dash of salt, 1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide, one drop of peppermint oil if you like it minty, and just a bit of stevia to make it sweet – stevia can be found at most health food stores – and just mix it into a paste) or skin care products (just use lemon juice).

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

This is part of an ongoing series about how to trim the budget of the average American. As this series focuses on such broad-based tips, some will work for you and some will not. You’re invited to mention in the comments the tips that you found to be the most useful for inclusion in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of this series.

Alcoholic Beverages – $457

The solution to cutting this element of your budget is easy.

Don’t drink.

For many of us, though, that’s not really a solution. I often enjoy a glass of red wine with my dinner and I like a mixed drink once in a while, particularly on social occasions. I know I’m far from alone in this type of attitude towards alcoholic beverages, too.

What’s the solution for keeping such spending under control? Let’s look at a few options.

Don’t spend more than $10 on a bottle of wine. There are thousands of different options for wines under $10. You don’t need the $50 bottle of wine in order to enjoy a nice glass of red with dinner. Pick up a low cost bottle and give it a swing.

Keep track of the low cost ones you do enjoy. This way, you can share these good low-cost wines when guests come over instead of feeling compelled to drop cash on a more expensive bottle that has some “promise” of being good (but really doesn’t have any such promise at all).

Have social events at home. Instead of going out for drinks and paying a hefty surcharge to sit in some loud, miserable place, have events at your own home. Have people bring a bottle of something they like and do something together, like play a board game or watch a film.

Look for specials. Alcohol is actually one of the most common loss leaders that stores use to get people in the door. Keep an eye on the prices local stores have in their flyer for your particular beverage of choice and stock up when it’s cheap.

Drop the brand snobbishness. Most of the times, brands are nothing more than the product of a lot of clever marketing – and you pay for that marketing with a higher sticker price. Nowhere is that more true than with alcoholic beverages, when you often pay substantially more for just a name on a label. If you doubt it, combine the idea with a social event at your home and have a blind taste test, for fun. You’ll likely be surprised.

Don’t drink at the restaurant. If you’ve decided to go out and eat, great! Have fun! However, you’re almost always far better off if you don’t consume alcoholic beverages at the restaurant, because they’re often exorbitantly overpriced. Instead, limit yourself to just a glass of wine with dinner, if that, and then enjoy a drink elsewhere with your dining companions.

Make your own. I make my own beer and find it to be cheaper to brew craft beers than to buy them. The savings is even stronger with wine, provided you find a reasonably-priced supplier. Make your own – it doesn’t take much equipment and it’s surprisingly fun to have others try your home brew.

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

This is part of an ongoing series about how to trim the budget of the average American. As this series focuses on such broad-based tips, some will work for you and some will not. You’re invited to mention in the comments the tips that you found to be the most useful for inclusion in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of this series.

Housing – housekeeping supplies – $639

Garbage bags. Dishwashing detergent. Window cleaner. Vacuum bags. Laundry detergent. These are all housekeeping supplies and, over the course of a year, they really add up. $53 a month goes down the drain just to these supplies (and often, it quite literally goes down the drain).

Fortunately, this is yet another area where you can make serious cuts without cramping your style.

Start with vinegar and baking soda. Most cleaning needs in your home can be solved by one or both of these substances – and they’re far cheaper than most cleaning supplies. Water-vinegar and water-baking soda solutions make great cleaners, and mixing baking soda and vinegar over a stain works like a charm. Baking soda works great as a deodorizer anywhere, and vinegar does wonders when cleaning the floor.

Make your own. I’m well known for making my own laundry detergent, but that just scratches the surface. You can make solutions for anything using inexpensive ingredients, from window cleaner to toilet bowl cleaner.

Buy in bulk. Most housekeeping supplies keep for a very long time, thus they’re perfect targets for buying in bulk. Large quantities of dishwashing detergent, laundry soap, and other materials are great to have on hand – they will essentially never go bad and you’re quite sure you’ll eventually use all of it. Plus, buying in bulk means that you save a little each time you use it.

Try different brands. Try the generics. Try the not-so-generics. Experiment with the different brands to find the one that does the job for you at the lowest price. Often, generics will do the trick. Sometimes, they won’t. Try different low cost brands and find the one that works best for you at the cheapest price.

Use coupons. Coupons work great for housekeeping supplies, even if you buy in bulk. They simply shave a little more off of the price of something you would buy anyway. Remember, though, to compare the costs after coupons, because quite often coupons won’t save you enough to make it a better deal than the generic.

Read the directions. Many people drastically waste their household products, doing things like using three or four times as much laundry detergent than they need. Take a moment to read the directions on your household products and you might find that you’re using far too much – and that cutting back to a reasonable amount will work just fine and save you money.

Buy what you actually need, not what you think you need. I’m looking squarely at you, SoftScrub in my closet. I’m not saying that SoftScrub isn’t useful for cleaning – it really is – but most of the times I would break out the SoftScrub, I find other solutions that work just as well and are a lot cheaper and more convenient – I’m looking at you, baking soda paste. Don’t buy it unless you’re sure you need it, and try out using baking soda and vinegar in cleaning solutions first.

Use cloth rags instead of paper towels. Paper towels are one-and-done items – you use them, then you toss (or burn) them. Cloth rags can be used hundreds of times. Even better, they don’t really have a laundry cost, since you can just throw a dirty handful into any load of laundry without altering the load a bit. Keep a kitchen drawer full of cloth rags instead of constantly rebuying paper towels and you’ll see your budget happily drop a bit.

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

This is part of an ongoing series about how to trim the budget of the average American. As this series focuses on such broad-based tips, some will work for you and some will not. You’re invited to mention in the comments the tips that you found to be the most useful for inclusion in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of this series.

Food – food at home – $3,465

Another $300 a month component of the average family budget comes from merely eating at home. This does not include food eaten outside the home, nor does it include household cleaning supplies, toiletries, and other items that typically are bunched together in a family’s budget (since they’re often purchased together).

I like cooking at home – in fact, I’d go so far as to say I’m passionate about it. As a result, I often talk about cooking and food on The Simple Dollar, so for you regular readers, many of the tips below will seem old hat.

Five years ago, though, I rarely cooked at home at all. I could barely fry an egg and most meals just seemed ridiculously hard. Instead of putting out all that effort, I’d just go out to eat – and that became an enormous money leak in my life.

Here are twelve big things you can do to reduce your food spending at home, regardless of whether you eat out a lot or if you eat primarily at home.

Learn how to cook at home. The actual ability to cook real food makes it much easier to simply make the choice to eat at home instead of eating out. If you have difficulty boiling an egg, eating out seems like a vastly easier and less time-consuming choice. It’s not. I recommend checking a copy of How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman and just start at the beginning, trying everything suggested in there. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to a “teach yourself to cook at home” book that doesn’t overwhelm you in details right off the bat.

Make grocery lists. Keep a list on your refrigerator with a pen dangling from it. The simple way to do it is to take two cheap fridge magnets, a notepad, a pen, and a piece of string, and homebrew it. Just glue a magnet to the back of the pad and hang it up. Then, glue one end of the string to the other magnet, tape the other end of the string to the pen, and hang up that magnet. Whenever you notice something you need, write it down immediately. Then, when you go to the grocery store, trust your list. Buy only what’s listed. Don’t wander aimlessly and buy a bunch of impulsive things.

Make a simple price book to determine which store near you has the best prices. The easiest way to do this is to identify the fifteen to twenty-five most common things you buy at the grocery store, then shop at a bunch of different stores and compare the prices on these items. The store with the lowest average price on the things you buy should be the store you shop at regularly. I was surprised when I did this test myself, because I discovered that the store I thought was low priced was far from the least expensive option on the stuff I actually bought routinely.

Make a meal plan. Plan out what you’ll eat a week in advance before you leave for the grocery store. Know the next seven breakfasts, lunches, and dinners you’ll have, then make sure you have all of the ingredients for them. If you don’t, add that ingredient to the shopping list (it’s right on your fridge, right?).

Use your grocery store flyer. The grocery store flyer can be a great extension of the meal plan. You can use the flyer to see what items are on sale that week – particularly the fresh produce. Plan your meals for the upcoming week around these items. This will reduce the average cost of each meal because the meals are centered around an ingredient or two you got at a deep discount.

Buy fewer convenience foods. I don’t just mean frozen meals (I’ll get to those in a minute). I’m talking about things like pre-bagged lettuce and pre-cut apples. If you actually sit down and compare the prices on such prepared foods, you’re essentially paying $5 or so for about three minutes’ worth of work. Get some reusable containers, go home with the raw lettuce or apples, and do such things yourself.

Make more convenience foods. Instead of stopping each morning for breakfast, make your own breakfast burritos in advance and freeze them. Instead of just buying a premade mediocre overpriced casserole, make your own casserole in advance and freeze it. You can make your own convenience foods – and you’ll find that they’re both tastier and less expensive than the convenience foods you’ll buy elsewhere.

Drink filtered tap water as your primary beverage. Water from the tap is the least expensive beverage available to you – take advantage of it. Make it into your primary beverage throughout the day. You don’t have to give up whatever your favorite beverage might be – mine is vegetable juice, actually – but if you replace the majority of your intake with water, you’ll reduce your spending, reduce your calorie intake, and view that drink you like so much as a treat rather than a mundane requirement.

Eat (and enjoy) leftovers. When you have food left over, don’t just push it to the back of the fridge and forget about it. Have leftovers for dinner once in a while – and make it more flavorful by amping up the spices in it. Use leftovers as the basis for future meals, like transforming pot roast leftovers into a pie. Even better….

Brown bag your lunch. Take leftovers when you can. Even if you can’t, a simple meal made at home and taken to work is far, far cheaper than going out with the gang. Try doing it one or two days more a week than you do now and you’ll be surprised to see how much money you can save.

Have potluck dinners with friends. Many people socialize by going out to dinner. Why not do the same thing at home with home-cooked food and a much, much smaller bill? Start a series of potluck dinners with your friends by hosting the first one – make the main course and ask your friends to bring side dishes. It can be a fun social engagement, plus it’s a big money saver when it comes to food.

Appreciate (and utilize) the low-cost staples. I love beans. They’re incredibly inexpensive, very filling, and provide essential protein in your diet. I use beans as often as I can in recipes. Rice is another low-cost staple (though not as low-cost as it once was) that can provide an essential element to your meals. Look in the produce section of your local store over time and note the ingredients that are very low-cost. Seek to grow intimately familiar with how to make these items – and you’ll find yourself saving a lot of money.

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

This is part of an ongoing series about how to trim the budget of the average American. As this series focuses on such broad-based tips, some will work for you and some will not. You’re invited to mention in the comments the tips that you found to be the most useful for inclusion in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of this series.

Housing – utilities, fuels, public services – $3,477

The average American family spends almost $3,500 a year just keeping the energy going in their home. Between heating, cooling, and running the multitude of electronic devices in our homes, we’re paying an average of $300 a month to the energy companies.

Fortunately, there are tons of actions you can take to reduce your energy bill each month. Yes, I’ve mentioned many of these before, but that’s because they work. They really do trim your home energy spending and are well worth doing if you’ve not done them before.

Install a programmable thermostat. A programmable thermostat is a device that allows you to set up a daily schedule of what you want the temperature to be in your home. This allows you to have the temperature go way up (in summer, keeping the AC from unning) or way down (in winter, keeping the furnace from running) during times when no one is at home or no one is awake – automatically. Even though I work from home, we still have found substantial energy savings from our programmable thermostat simply because of the temperature alterations at night. They’re easy to install – it takes about half an hour, a screwdriver, and a lack of fear about flipping a breaker.

Air seal your home. Air sealing your home involves detecting where cold or hot air from the outside is coming into your home, causing the cooling or heating in your home to effectively “leak.” Air sealing is a weekend-long project that can drastically reduce the leakage from your home, causing your energy bills to drop significantly. Here’s a great guide for energy sealing from EnergyStar.

Install new windows if your home is older. Properly installed EnergyStar windows can drastically reduce the energy lost directly through the windows in your home. Do the windows in your home collect frost in the winter? Is there noticeably warmer or cooler air near your windows? If that’s the case, it’s likely that your windows are adding significantly to your heating and cooling costs and there’s a substantial savings in your future if you replace your windows with energy efficient ones.

Use natural gas. In almost all areas, natural gas is more efficient and vastly less expensive per month of use. If natural gas is available in your area, consider moving major appliances to natural gas when it comes time to replace them.

Use natural ventilation whenever possible. If the temperature is between 60 and 85 F (or perhaps even more of a range than that), turn off the ventilation system entirely and throw open the windows. Our windows are open almost constantly during the spring and early fall months to take advantage of the wonderful weather outside.

Take advantage of incentives for energy improvements. Many energy companies (and federal and state governments) offer direct financial incentives for making energy-related improvements to your home. Quite often, these incentives will pay for a significant portion of the improvement, allowing you to simply collect the rewards from a lower energy bill. Take a look at the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency to get started.

Use fans. In the summer, ceiling fans do an effective job of utilizing breeze to make a room seem cooler than it actually is. Thus, you can easily afford to raise your thermostat a few degrees, trimming your energy bill substantially. In the winter, you can actually get away with lowering your thermostat a degree or two if you have ceiling fans. Adjust your ceiling fan to run counterclocklise in the summer and clockwise in the winter (see this ceiling fan guide for more details) to cause warm air to move up in the summer and move down in the winter.

Turn off lights and ceiling fans when you leave a room. It’s a simple habit – but a powerful one. If you leave four 75 watt light bulbs and a ceiling fan on in a room for even a couple of hours, you’ve lost a dime. Do it over and over again and you’re losing a lot of money. Get into the routine of just flipping the switch when you walk out of a room.

Move toward LED lighting. Yes, swapping out your lighting is a tried and true tactic for saving on energy, but CFLs are just a stopgap. LEDs are the ultimate best replacement for the bulbs in your home, as they have a very, very long life and use even less energy than CFLs. Use a mix of LEDs and incandescents in your home (incandescents still work best for natural lighting and reading lights, but LEDs are great for closets and hall lighting). Also, decorative lights are perfect for LED use.

Buy energy-efficient appliances. Study the energy efficiency numbers when you go appliance shopping and recognize that an appliance rated at 1,000 watts will consume about a dime’s worth of energy during every hour of use – and 100 watts will consume a penny of energy an hour. Use that for your calculations over a long lifetime – say, fifteen years – and you’ll often see that the energy efficient choice, though it’s a bit more now, is a huge saver over the long run. Add in the fact that there may be incentives (see above) for buying the efficient model and this becomes a no-brainer.

Get your major appliances – your furnace and central air conditioner – serviced regularly. Simply getting your ducts flushed and having your unit checked over and tweaked can make a big difference in your energy bill. Plus, quite often, at least part of the cost of this will be refurnded by your energy company if you turn in a receipt.

Heat (and cool) less space. If you have unused rooms – or infrequently used rooms – turn off the vents in that room, turn off all energy-using devices in the room, shut the door, and use a towel to block any air flow under the door. This will help with energy bills in both the winter and the summer.

Keep your shades drawn unless you actually need the light. By default, the most energy-efficient position for your curtains and shades is to keep them drawn. That doesn’t mean you should never open them – by all means, let the sunshine in! Just make it a choice to open them – keep them closed by default. The only exception to this rule is in the winter, when it’s worthwhile to open up the curtains or blinds on the side of the house that’s receiving direct sunlight.

There are countless little steps you can take to improve your energy usage – these are just among the most effective I’ve found.

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

Several times in 2009, I came across this thoroughly interesting infographic, originally from VisualEconomics.com:

You can click on the image to see a larger version of it over at Visual Economics.

The picture depicts how the average American family spends their income based on Department of Labor data. For those without the visuals, I’ll break the info on the chart down into a list for you.

Housing – shelter – $10,023
Pensions, Social Security – $5,027
Housing – utilities, fuels, public services – $3,477
Food – food at home – $3,465
Transportation – vehicle purchases – $3,244
Transportation – other expenses and transportation – $3,130
Healthcare – $2,853
Entertainment – $2,698
Food – food away from home – $2,668
Transportation – gasoline, motor oil – $2,384
Apparel and Services – $1,881
Cash Contributions (optional retirement and cash savings) – $1,821
Housing – household furnishings, equipment – $1,797
Education – $945
Housing – household operations – $984
Miscellaneous – $808
Housing – housekeeping supplies – $639
Alcoholic Beverages – $457
Personal Care – $588
Life, other personal insurance – $309
Reading – $118

For many people, this describes some form of their annual budget. Yes, some numbers are higher for some of us and other numbers are lower, but this really is a rough approximation of how we all spend our money.

How Is This Useful?
If we step back for a moment and look at this “budget,” it’s clear that there are ways in each category to reduce our spending.

This list is composed of twenty one entries, so each day for the next three weeks, I’ll tackle a single entry on this list, looking at both small and big ways to reduce spending in that area. For each one, I have at least ten ways to trim spending in that area – some big, some small, but all capable of improving your financial state.

Some of the tips will be useful to you – some of them won’t be and will apply better to someone else. The key to making your story successful is to look for the tips within each category that work for you and apply them in your own life and not worry about the rest.

In the comments of each one, I’m charging you with picking one or two of the tips that you think are the most useful for the average American. Once the series is finished, I’ll pick the three most popular tips in each category and make one “mega-post” detailing all of the popular items. It’ll be something of an ultimate “trim your budget” guide.

Tune in tomorrow for the first entry in this series, focusing on shelter costs!

Last Tuesday, I spent an afternoon shopping with my wife.

On the surface, it sounds like something we would have done five years ago, charging out to the stores, credit card in hand.

Things were a little different this time, though.

For one, we came home with fewer items than we left with. For two, we spent less than ten dollars all afternoon.

What did we wind up with? A newly refreshed living room, materials for another handmade toy for our child, and some adorable clothes for our rapidly-growing daughter.

Here’s the big shopping secret: we went thrifting.

That morning, my wife and I went through all of our children’s toys and reduced the total volume by about fifty percent, getting rid of items that the children simply didn’t play with that we felt wouldn’t have a ton of resale value at a yard sale. We filled up a large tub with the items and departed, dropping those items off as a donation.

Of course, while we were there, we also looked around the store for clothes for our daughter, as she’s rapidly jumping up in sizes. We found several very nice items for her – including a few that still had tags on them, including items from Baby Gap and similar places.

We also went through their true bargain basement items and salvaged a few sweaters. Why? We utilize old sweaters to make Silly Snakes for our kids (and for other kids, too).

We came home with two small bags of items, having spent less than $10. We also came home to a much emptier family room, one that has more than adequate space for the new toys our children received for Christmas. We also got to spend a (rare) afternoon together, just the two of us.

This is how frugal people live their lives. It’s not weird or uncomfortable or un-fun. We do the same things everyone else does. We update our children’s wardrobes. We work on craft projects. We spend time together shopping.

The only difference is that we start our children’s clothes shopping at the secondhand store instead of at the Baby Gap – and we often wind up with the same exact items of clothing. We focus on projects that utilize materials that are extremely inexpensive to begin with. And when we go shopping, we consider it a virtue to get a lot of bang for every dollar we spend – and the most important part is the time we spend together.

The real trick with frugality in modern life often isn’t figuring out ways to spend less. It’s getting past the mountains of marketing messages and cultural norms that revolve around spending.

There’s almost always an inexpensive way to do the thing you want to do. The question is whether or not you can see it through all of the mixed messages.

Luckily, on a day with my wife, we work together on it.