Frugal Living Guide: 35 Simple Tips to Live Frugally While Enjoying Life
Do you want to save more money while working toward your financial goals? Frugal living is one of the best ways to accomplish both.
If you’re ready to live a life of frugality, here’s what you need to know.
Frugal Living Guide: Start Living Frugally with these 35 Simple Tips
1. Earn Cash Back Rewards for Using Your Credit Cards
When used responsibly, credit cards are a great way to earn Cash Back on your everyday transactions. Cash Back credit cards pay back a percentage of what you spend (sometimes more than 5% cash back).
Depending on how you spend money and where you shop, you can earn Miles and Points (fancy talk for Cash Back) and Bonus Membership Perks (e.g. free checked baggage. That’s $50/person/trip!) .
Related Post: Struggling with Credit Card debt? Here’s a step-by-step guide to wipe out credit card debt fast.
2. Save More by Dining at Home
Eating out can add up. Imagine if you were to eat out every day for lunch and on each outing you spent about $10 per meal. You would end up spending $2,600 a year for just eating out during your lunch hour. If you want to find a more frugal way to live, it may be beneficial to eat most of your meals at home.
Here are a few other ways you can save by dining in.
3. Make a Grocery List
How often do you find yourself browsing the aisles of the grocery store and then purchasing more food than you intended to? If you want to live a frugal lifestyle, it’s important to make a list every time you visit the store. Making a grocery list will help you stay within your budget and only purchase the items you actually need.
Before you venture to the store, take an inventory of everything you already have and only purchase the items you need.
4. Purchase Generic Items
Frugal living is about getting the most value out of each dollar you spend. Being loyal to one brand may not help you get the most bang for your buck when grocery shopping.
Purchasing generic items can help you save money and they may be just as good as their alternatives. If you’re committed to frugal living, try buying generic.Conduct Research to Get the Most Out of Your Vacation Dollars
Just because you live a frugal life doesn’t mean you can’t go on vacation or splurge on activities. However, it’s important to do proper research to find the best deals and discounts.
Conducting the proper research with help you maximize your money. Here are some vacation options to make your travel savings go further.
5. Â Rent a Turro Car – Earn $80/month
Instead of renting a car from a costly rental company, try Turro for an inexpensive alternative.
All you need to do is sign up and start renting cars from great people around the city.
If you enjoy saving the environment while making a little extra cash, Turro also offers car owners the opportunity to earn money to rent out their car.
6. Stay in Rentals Instead of Expensive Hotels
Sites like Airbnb and VRBO offer cost-effective accommodation options for your vacation. With these sites you can rent entire properties or just a room for a short stay.
Using these sites not only helps you live cheap but they also give a more authentic vacation experience. For example, if you choose to stay with a local family, your hosts can help you become familiar with the area and share the secrets that lie within their city.
Hotels may not offer the same experience. Start browsing vacation rentals and discover options that’s fit within your budget today.
7. Avoid Toll Roads
If you prefer road trips over flight travel, toll roads can eat into your budget. If you have an iPhone you can set your maps app to avoid toll roads.
Here’s how to set it up on your phone:
Setting > maps > driving/navigation > Avoid Tolls (on)
8. Vacation During the Off Season
Vacation rates can fluctuate based on the season you choose to travel. For example, if you want to visit the beach on spring break, you may be looking at expensive flights and accommodation rates. Instead of going to a desired location during the high season, vacation during the off season.
You may be able to find better deals and discounts based solely on the time you choose to travel.
9. Setup Price Alerts
Flight prices can fluctuate daily. If you don’t want to spend your time browsing the internet for the best deal on flights, set up a price alert for your desired location. Sites like Kayak and Travelocity will send you notifications when your flight has dropped in price.
Setting up price alerts can save you time and money. Why waste your time comparing rates, when you can have someone do it for you?
Decrase Your Expenes
Decreasing your expenses gives you more room to prioritize your spending. If you want more flexibility with how you spend your money, here are a few ways to cut your expenses.
10. Invest in a Programmed Thermostat
Investing in a programmed thermostat is a great frugal tip for saving on heating and cooling costs. Installing a remote thermostat allows you to control the heat and AC right from your phone. If you’re away, remote thermostats will let you adjust the temperature of your home to prevent you from wasting energy.
Spending a little bit of money on a remote thermostat could potentially save you hundreds of dollars on your electric bill.
Related Post: Cut down your electric bill with the top energy-efficient products on Amazon!
11. Find Cheap Activities to Do With Your Friends
Happy hour and weekly nights out with your friends can become expensive. Look for inexpensive ways to spend time with your friends instead of spending money on entertainment.
For example, instead of meeting for dinner, invite your friends over for appetizers. You can ask each one of your friends to bring a different item to help minimize the cost.
There are plenty of ways to spend time with your friends that don’t have to cost a ton of money. Get creative and try something new for your next gathering.
12. Cut Your Health Care Spending
Health care may be one of your most expensive costs yet.
Liberty HealthShare offers families and individuals an affordable way to manage their medical expenses. Liberty HealthShare members make a monthly contribution online, which is then paired with a medical need within the group.
This diverse community is committed to supporting medical expenses after the annual threshold is met.
If you want to join a community that supports your medical needs, try Liberty HealthShare.
13. Visit the Library to Save Money on Entertainment
Instead of renting movies from Netflix or visiting your local movie theater, stop by the library to review their entertainment options. Most libraries allow you to rent books, movies, magazines, and more for no cost.
Using the library is a great frugal tip to help you cut costs.
14. Minimize Your Grooming Trips
According to Angie’s list, haircuts can range in price from $10 to $100 per visit. If you usually visit a salon every few weeks, getting your haircut can be extremely expensive. Instead, try to prolong your visits or find a friend or family member who can cut your hair for a cheaper price.
Additionally, if you enjoy getting your nails done every two weeks, try doing them yourself.
Frugal tip: You could even make it a group event with all of your friends and do your nails together. It’s a great way to spend time together while saving money.
15. Rent Out Your Space
If you have an extra space in your home, why not put it to good use and rent it out to someone in need? Whether you have an extra room or an entire wing of your property going unused, list it on a site like Roomster for semi-permanent to permanent renters.
List your property today and be one step closer to ultimate frugal living.
Frugal Driving Tips
Depending on where you live, transportation can take up a large portion of your budget. From gas to car maintenance, owning a vehicle is a huge expense. But, there are other options to help you save on your transportation costs.
Here are a few alternatives you should consider.
16. Drive Gently
Did you know that driving aggressively can put more wear and tear on your vehicle? Did you also know that it can increase your use of gas? By driving gently, you can help preserve your car as well as Save on Gas.
Driving better may even help you relax during a traffic jam. After all, who enjoys feeling road rage?
17. Walk When You Can
If you live close to work or shopping areas, you may want to walk instead of driving your vehicle. Walking is a great way to reduce transportation costs, get exercise, and save the environment.
If walking isn’t an option, try investing in a bike. It may take you a little more time to get to your desired destination but the extra time could be worth the money you’re saving.
Even if you just eliminate one trip a week, you could drastically see a decrease in your transport expenses.
18. Ask Your Employer if You Can Work from Home
With the advancements in technology, many employers are allowing their employees to work right from home. This saves employees commute time and transportation costs.
If you don’t already have the option to telecommute, speak with your employer and ask if they would be willing to let you work from home. If you need a little help starting the conversation, try this.
19. Consider Becoming a One-Car Home
If you and your spouse work in close proximity to one another, you may want to consider becoming a one-car household. Owning only one car can help you eliminate the maintenance headaches and cut some of your transportation costs.
Becoming a one-car household is also a great way to spend more time together. What could be better than saving money and getting closer to your spouse?
20. Keep Up with Car Maintenance
Keeping up with your vehicle’s maintenance is vital to keeping your car running. As a frugal consumer, you want to do everything you can to avoid costly repairs or the purchase of a new car.
Be sure to get your oil changed, replace filters, and get routine checkups to keep your car running efficiently.
Budget Your Way to Frugality
In order to maintain a frugal life, you must understand the money you have coming in and going out. A well-designed budget can help you spend less, pay down debt, and save more.
Creating a budget gives you the freedom and flexibility to spend money the way you want. It allows you to prioritize your spending and achieve all of your financial goals. If you’re ready to boost your frugality, here’s our ultimate guide to creating a budget.
21. Use the 50/30/20 Rule
You may also want to consider using the 50/30/20 rule. This means that you use 50% of your budget toward needs, 30% of your budget toward wants, and 20% of your budget toward savings.
- Needs includes: groceries, transportation, housing, and insurance
- Wants includes: shopping, eating out, vacation, and entertainment
- Savings includes: saving goals, retirement, and investments
The 50/30/20 rule can be used as a guideline to help you achieve a frugal lifestyle.
What Does Frugal Living Mean?
Frugal living means predominately saving and not wasting your financial means. By living frugally, you prioritize saving and make good use of the resources already available to you. Every purchase you make is carefully considered and thought out.
Being cheap and being frugal are not one in the same. There’s a difference between prioritizing your spending and spending the least amount possible. When someone is cheap, they are more concerned with the bottom line than the actual value they’re purchasing.
For example, a frugal person may look for coupons when dining out, while a cheap person may not leave a tip no matter how good the service was. See the difference?
Why Live Frugally?
Frugal living helps you be more mindful with the money you earn. When you’re frugal, you are more intentional about your purchases and how you choose to spend your money. You carefully consider each purchase for the value it adds instead of the price.
By focusing on value instead of price, it may help you spend less because your purchases last longer.
Frugal living doesn’t have to be challenging. By using these simple frugal tips, you can prioritize your spending and stay within your means.
Do you have any favorite frugal living tips? Let us know in the comments down below.
Be sure to follow us on Pinterest for more simple tips to live frugally the year!
Save these tips for later by bookmarking this page or Pinning it here!
Check out some of our other Frugal Living Tips:
About the author Ashley Chorpenning
Ashley is a personal finance writer and content creator. In addition to being a contributing writer at the Budgeting Couple, she writes for solo entrepreneurs as well as for Fortune 500 companies. When she’s not calculating her net worth or reading the hot new finance book, you might find Ashley cage diving with great white sharks in South Africa.
Hi Ashley!
No doubts, frugal living is essential, if you have limited income. One must be disciplined enough in cutting down expenses when the time comes. This is the best way to live a debt-free life and enjoy frugal living.
Buying organic can keep you healthy and even though it is a bit more expensive, I think it is worth the investment in the long run to actually buy organic now so you don’t spend money on health issues.
These are great tips. I love using Ibotta, it’s saved us so much on groceries. Any tips to cut cost on groceries is the best since that’s where most of our expenses go to. Great article.
So glad you enjoyed 🙂
These are all such great tips! We try hard to live frugally by embracing a homesteading lifestyle. We’ve saved a ton on groceries by growing our own and selling to others. We’re also busy working hard on our homestead goals to really go out and shop. Thanks for this post!
That sounds awesome Diana. Thank you for sharing!
Great tips to save a bunch! Thanks. 🙂
So glad you enjoyed Kim! 🙂
Consolidating trips when you run errands can reduce costs. I get paid 56 cents a mile when I have to drive as part of my job duties, so I use that as a guide. A 20 mile round trip adds $11.20 to the cost of an errand. So running for a gallon of milk, it is cheaper to pay $1 more at the convenient mart/gas station 2 miles away than run to the grocery store for example.
We ditched cable tv and get 28 local channels clear over an antenna. Why pay for over 100 channels when we do not watch much television? And we can get the local news free, which is extra on cable or satellite.
We do oil changes on the vehicles at home as well as the mowers, snowblower and tractor. Sharpening blades and changing belts as routine maintenance.
Hubby is the family barber and stylist, I get my locks trimmed every other month and my boys get theirs cut every 3-4 weeks. Zero costs for haircuts and savings on the transportation costs and no waiting. He does great work, I get asked where I take my boys for haircuts as they look so good, and two of my friends stop by to have him cut theirs or sometimes he does it at their house if we are visiting. We were invited to a barbecue at my best friend’s house last Saturday and she asked me to have hubby bring his haircutting shears and stuff as she needs a trim. He did bring his bag and left it in the car. After we ate, my best friend asked if he brought them as we were hanging out on her deck afterwards. He said sure, then went out to get them as she got out a stool to sit on. So he trimmed her hair as we chatted and had some wine coolers. As he was almost finished , one of her friends pulled her extremely long ponytail around from her back, was looking at her ends and stated she really needed a trim as well. i think we were all quite surprised she said that. Hubby told her that being her hair was so long, he would need her to stand to trim her hair that was long enough to sit on. She said ok, and being her ends were really uneven and had some straggly long pieces, he told her that he would have to take at least five inches off the long pieces to get it even across the back. She said go ahead, it had been over two years since she last had it cut. He trimmed her hair as we all watched intently, it looked so much better after he finished, of course a couple other of the ladies thought he should have cut off a lot more, but my guy is good, not scissor happy, he ignored the remarks and she thanked him afterwards. I believe in being frugal, but going over two years without a trim would be way too long for me. But I think I have it good when not only my friends, but their friends want my hubby to cut their hair. I joked with him that he had a new client. He said yup, she will want one in another two years.
Usually gatherings with friends consist of everyone deciding who brings what of food, and BYOB so it is not all dumped on the hostess to provide everything. We prefer that over the high costs of the restaurant food and drinks. And playing board games during the colder months or horseshoes, badminton, bean toss and other yard games in the warmer weather is cheap fun. My family always had a big picnic in August where we did burgers, chicken, clams, corn on the cob, salads and desserts and a birthday cake for my grandma. So frugal is not new.
Wow! Thank you for all these amazing frugal tips Carolyn! So glad to have you here 🙂
Vacationing in the off-season is an amazing savings. The library is also great. My wife and I do many of these, and that allowed us to retire very early. I’ll have to check out some of the cash back options! The receipt scanning sounds easy. Thank you for the post.
Earn miles or points upon purchasing and then redeem for goods and money are also the common ways of saving money.
Great tip! We love using credit card points as well!