Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Frugality Will Change You

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Ninja, over at Punch Debt in the Face, wrote an article last week about being addicted to savings that got me thinking. Or, thinking harder, I suppose.  The attitude that he talks about towards savings is one that I’ve noticed in myself and others who have gone the way of the Frugaler.  He calls it an addiction.  I think it’s something a little more sneaky.  Something that creeps up on you and then grabs hold and won’t let go.  Something many will call “Habit”.

Views vary on how we pick up habits, but, by definition, a habit is something that you do over and over without much thought.  An unconscious task that you repeat.  It’s no coincidence that many addictions are also referred to as habits.  Smoking is sometimes referred to as a bad habit.  A pot of coffee a day is sometimes referred to as a bad habit.  But, a savings habit is a good habit.  One that many will struggle to establish.  Drug habits, smoking habits, and coffee habits are all habits that are easy to pick up because they cause a pleasure response in you body.  A savings habit is a bit harder to pick up.  But, as Ninja will attest, it can be done.

How?  Repetition.  Do something repeatedly, for a long enough time period, and it becomes a habit.  Being a successful Frugaler is a product of habit.  We start off forcing ourselves to turn off lights as we leave a room, shop for good deals before buying something, save a certain amount out of every paycheck, and set aside a certain amount each month for charitable giving.  And, before we know it, those things that we started off forcing ourselves to do become habits and we do them automatically, without having to think about doing them.  If there’s one thing anyone with a bad habit will tell you, habits are hard to break.

I know that I’ve felt it.  I often spend a month or more deciding on whether to buy something or not.  Especially if it’s on that fringe where it may or may not be necessary.  I’ve spent weeks bidding on items on eBay, determined to get an item at a specific price point.  Something that I could have paid a few dollars more for and had weeks earlier.  Like the junkie looking for his/her next fix, I’ve got a saving habit that I can’t quit.  The more I do it, the harder it is to spend any money at all.

Of course, like anything that’s good for you, there is a line where it becomes slightly less good for you, and then can become downright bad too.  Saving is good.  Pushing your savings to a point where you’re taking it to extremes is less good.  And becoming a downright miser is bad. Setting savings goals is a good way to limit the extremity of your saving.

A Frugality habit will change you.  As your savings tasks become habit, it becomes easier and easier, and eventually, you hardly notice it.  What are your savings habits?  How did you establish them?

photo credit: epSos.de

Couponing Doesn’t Need to be Extreme

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Every day, I hear people say that they don’t use coupons because they don’t have the time to go through the papers and mailers and clip the coupons. “It just takes too much time” they say. Those same people, will spend hours budgeting and finding ways to save themselves money, but they don’t see couponing as a viable use of their time and efforts. While coupons may not be as important to your financial health as a budget, they can be just as good as many of the other saving methods that you will employ.

With the popularity of extreme couponing, it’s no wonder that people feel that they need to spend hours each week pouring over newspaper inserts, clipping coupons, then sorting them all into categories and then making plans for where they’ll shop and what they’ll buy. In their mind, they see piles and piles of inserts, and closets full of extra supplies that they’ll need years to use up.

Box o' couponsCouponing doesn’t need to be extreme, though. If skipping your daily latte can be a good strategy for saving a few dollars a day, so can clipping a few coupons. Taking a few minutes each week to flip through the inserts in your paper and clipping the few coupons that you find for the things that you buy regularly can easily save you a few dollars a week. Signing up for manufacturer email newsletters can often result in an electronic coupon to print out once or twice a month. A few extra emails a month is a small price to pay to save a dollar or two.

Now, the thing to remember here is that you aren’t going to retire off of the money you’ll save. And, you certainly won’t be sending your kids to college with it either. But, saving money is saving money. A few dollars here, and a few dollars there all adds up in the grand scheme of things. Heck, maybe you clip coupons so that you can treat yourself once a week to that latte that you’re currently skipping.

Anything that can be done, has been done to an extreme. But, just because the extreme version of something is popular, doesn’t mean that it has to be the only way. Just like there are people who run extreme marathons of 100 miles or more, doesn’t mean that you can’t be a runner. Just because there are hyper-milers who squeeze every extra bit of MPG out of their cars, doesn’t mean that you can’t employ a few of the same methods to save a bit on gas. And, just because there are people who spend hours each week clipping, sorting, and analyzing coupons, doesn’t mean that you can’t spend a few minutes each Sunday to save a few bucks.

photo credit: sdc2027

Flossing with Chest Hair

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Being a frugaler means making some sacrifices.  We sacrifice in order to save a few bucks.  Sometimes, it becomes a bit of an addiction.  We get a small high off of the act of saving.  While you can certainly have worse addictions, even an addiction to saving can be a bad thing at times.

Taking Frugal to Extremes.

Before you get any funny ideas, I really should let you off the hook.  This post isn’t really about flossing with chest hair.  (It’s a catchy title though, isn’t it?)  I don’t actually know of anyone ever having flossed with chest hair, nor would I suggest it.  But, it serves as a good example of a way that people could take saving to an extreme.  There’s a growing movement to do things in a sustainable manner, and using things that are renewable (like chest hair) is a big part of that.  But, there are extremes.  For instance, I’ve read about people who use a special kind of stick that is very fibrous, and they chew on it instead of brushing or flossing.  Some things, I’d just rather pay for.  Being frugal is good.  Being so frugal that you chew on sticks?  I’m not going to judge, but it seems a bit too extreme for me.

Finding a Happy Frugal Medium.

There is seldom a cure to any addiction.  Overcoming one usually entails years of counseling, and hard work on the part of the addicted.  Part of the treatment is usually to completely forgo whatever it is that you’re addicted to.  If you’re an alcoholic, drinking any alcohol at all is forbidden.  But, I can’t, and won’t, condone abstaining from frugality.  Overcoming an addiction to being frugal is just a matter of finding a happy medium where you can still save money, while still living in a way that doesn’t have to include extreme cutbacks.

Thinking..

The Cure to Extreme Frugality.

Without thinking about it too hard, come up with something that you spend money on that you can’t do without.  Again, I’m not going to judge.  For some, it will be their car.  For others, it will be their morning coffee.  Now, come up with something that you currently spend money on that you can do without.  For some reason, for most people, it’s harder to come up with something we can do without than it is something we can’t do without.  Why is that?  The answer is that it’s psychological.  As frugal people, we’ve thought long and hard on ways to save money and to pay off our debt.  In our minds, we’ve analyzed everything that we spend money on.  We then justified everything that we spend.  In some of those cases, we’ve created justification for ourselves so that we don’t have to get rid of something that we would rather not.  So, it’s harder to find something that we know we can do without because, in our minds, we’ve created a justification that makes it something we need.  The cure to finding a happy medium and avoiding the extreme frugal addiction is to take a close look at the things we’ve justified and find those things that we’ve created justifications for that really aren’t all that justified.  In short, stop lying to yourself.  Once you do, you’ll have found several things that you can cut back on, or remove entirely, that will save you money without going to extremes.

It’s just as hard to overcome the addiction of lying to yourself as any other addiction.  There should (and maybe is) be a 12-step program for it.  Until then, try and be truly honest wit yourself.  Understand that you’ll probably slip up once or twice.  That’s forgivable.  Just recognize that you’ve slipped, and get back on track.

photo credit: Just Add Light