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FRUGAL LIVING TIPS I Learned From Quarantine (Ways to Save Money WITHOUT Being Cheap)
Feb 2, 2024
When it comes to frugal living, I haven't always been the best. But since I've grown and learned from my mistakes, I know my frugal living tips will help you out. They may even change your life.
Now that I'm considered "Very" frugal by most people, I wanted to share my experience because you could very well be facing the challenges I was facing when I first started living on my own at 21.
The big key here is: frugal living is so much more than money. It's about improving yourself and making improvements within your life and understanding your money, what to do with it, adapting to situations, and essentially, overcoming yourself.
I know, I know... those don't sound like frugal living but I promise, follow the principles in this video and you'll be on your way to frugal living in no time.
My hope is that this video resonates with you and you enjoy every bit of it. If you like this video please like, share and subscribe!
//Creative Commons Attribution Licence video (Reuse allowed)
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0:00
I haven't always been a very frugal person
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I grew up seeing kids my age wearing the newest Jordans, playing the newest gaming consoles
0:08
walking around with the latest iPhones, and driving brand new really nice cars at the
0:14
age of 16. Now, I didn't have all that stuff, but seeing it on a regular basis subconsciously made
0:20
me want these things more and more, but it gave me the wrong mindset about money
0:26
Whenever I saw something I wanted, I would work to get it every single time, but it led
0:31
to a cycle of do the work, get the money, spend the money, start back at zero, and that
0:36
cycle continued and it followed me all the way into adulthood. What I'm saying is before I became as frugal as I am today, I definitely had to learn the
0:44
hard way, and I'm going to share with you exactly what I've learned so you don't have
0:47
to learn it the hard way. When it comes to frugal living, the biggest tip that I can give you by far is to have
0:53
a persistent mindset. So you know we have this pandemic going on, and recently I got quarantined, and during
1:01
that time I did not go anywhere at all. Guess what? They gave me nothing but time to reflect, and during that time I could really only think
1:09
about one thing and one thing only. Money. Specifically, my current financial situation
1:16
I thought about how much money I make every single year. I thought about how much debt I'm in
1:21
I thought about how much money I have in all my different bank accounts
1:25
I thought about how much money I want to be making per year in the next couple years
1:29
I thought about my overall financial goals for the future. You know, that type of thing
1:34
The financial goals that I have for myself boil down to one thing and one thing only
1:38
A persistent, long-term mindset. This goes so much deeper than personal finance
1:44
This is discipline, self-confidence, and relentlessness all in one. If you're going to live a frugal life successfully, there's no allowing other people's opinions
1:54
or ideas of what you should be doing to dictate the decisions that you make for your life
2:01
You will be criticized. That's just the nature of the beast, and ever since I've grown and I've learned to make
2:08
smart, intentional financial decisions, and now that I actually do live a frugal lifestyle
2:13
you best believe I get criticism. You'll hear stuff like, man, you never buy yourself anything
2:18
Come on, you can afford it. You have the money. You can afford it. Man, you're so tight with money
2:23
Good God. Hey, why haven't you bought that new car yet? You got all this money
2:28
Or my favorite, you're so cheap. That's my favorite one right there
2:32
And you know what? That's where confidence comes into play. A confident, frugal person does not give a crap about what anybody has to say about him
2:42
or what they have to think about them, period. You know why
2:48
Your goals are more important. And I know this is much easier said than done. This is honestly something that I've struggled with in my life, honestly for most of my life
2:55
but trust me, once you really hone in on your goals and you make them your main focus, you
3:01
will care less and less what people think of you. So you're 20-something years old
3:05
You make good money. You want to save your first $20,000 by the end of the year, and you want to be able to
3:10
buy your first house by the age of 25, right? So then you've got to ask yourself this question
3:16
Which one is more important, my goals or their opinions? By the way, this is 1,000 times easier if you just surround yourself around the right people
3:25
I mean, after all, you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with
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Think of it like this. What happens if you put a rotten apple next to a fresh apple
3:34
The fresh apple goes bad, right? That's exactly what happens when you're the only frugal person within your group
3:42
Eventually, their opinions, their tendencies, their spending habits, their wants, their thoughts will become your own
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Ask me how I know. It's almost like every time you're going for a goal, it's like the world knows, and the
3:55
world tries to do everything in its power to make sure you don't reach those goals
4:01
Have you noticed that? Speaking of which, family and friends will ask you for money
4:05
They will ask you to go out with them to eat, or they might ask you to go out for drinks
4:10
They may even ask you to go out with them to the club. And as much as I've struggled with this in my personal life, I'm here to tell you that
4:17
the word no is not only a powerful word, but it's also a complete sentence
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If you personally can't help somebody out with money, then just tell them no. There's no use in both of you being broke
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You got friends who want you to go out with them, but you don't want to go? Hey, if it wastes your time and your money, and you genuinely don't want to go, tell them no
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Oh, you'll get pushback. Don't worry. You're going to absolutely get pushback. But I'm going to tell you this
4:40
Whenever I had any goal in life, any goal at all, whether it was making straight A's
4:44
in school or saving up a certain amount of money, I did not let anybody, and I mean anybody
4:49
get in the way of that. That's even if I got called lame or boring for making my decision, my adult decision
4:56
to tell my friends no. I had to come to the realization that my goals are way more important than people pleasing
5:03
or any form of instant gratification. Maybe hard for you. It was definitely hard for me, but say no
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I found that the hardest part about saying no to others is actually saying no to myself
5:13
You see, I've always had a big heart, and I've always wanted to help as many people
5:17
as possible. And there came a time when I was just way too nice, and I was slowly but surely becoming
5:22
a people pleaser without even realizing it. And until I realized I can't save everyone, not everyone has the same heart as me, and
5:29
it's literally impossible to please everybody, that made the ongoing battle of saying no
5:35
to myself much, much easier. And look, living a frugal lifestyle is about making changes, like constant changes in your
5:43
life all the time. And by changes, I mean improvements. I'm talking financially, relationally, and mentally
5:51
And that's the quality of information you consume. That's the quality of people that you have in your life
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And that's the quality of your decisions. Another piece of that is saying no to yourself when it comes to things that you want to buy
6:03
yourself because you feel like you deserve them. I've been a sneakerhead since I was in elementary school, and I love Jordans
6:10
I always have. But as more and more money came into my life, I felt more and more responsibility, and part
6:16
of that responsibility was not getting those Jordans anymore. Growing up, I was very heavily into technology and video games
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But when I started really making money, it was like a switch that I had to turn off
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The pleasure and the fun of buying these video games had to be turned off
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So for a while, there was no more buying the newest Call of Duty game or buying the newest
6:39
Mortal Kombat that just got released. And if you know anything about me, you know I love food
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And sometimes I'm a man of convenience. Sometimes I don't want to cook. Sometimes I don't even want to go out to a fast food restaurant
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So a thing that I used to do a lot was go to work and hit up those vending machines
6:55
for some honey buns, any kind of junk food that was up in there. I used to scan my card like it was crazy, like the world was ending or something
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I spent a lot of money on overpriced items in the vending machine. So what I started doing was I just started leaving my wallet in my car
7:09
At least that way, if I ever wanted to get something, I would have to walk all the way out to my car
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Like at work is a pretty big place. So I'd have to walk all the way out to my car just to get it
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I ain't walking out all the way out there to scan a card
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I'm just not. That's just an example of a way that I gauged how I can stop myself from spending unnecessarily
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You know what I'm saying? But what I'm getting at here is those were the internal battles I had to go through
7:36
See, this is not so much focusing on money. This is more focusing on you and your intentionality behind the way you think and the way you do things
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So yeah, those were my internal battles and no one knew anything about them. Like none of my friends and my family members knew about those battles that I was facing
7:54
And it was definitely challenging for me to do. But guess what? I overcame those challenges and made those improvements in my life because I knew I would
8:00
have to if I were going to get to where I wanted to be in terms of frugal living
8:06
But I'm going to warn you though. As you make these improvements, you're going to feel better and better about yourself
8:12
To a fault. I know I did. It got to a point where I was stagnant in my financial journey
8:18
I wasn't adding on to goals like I should be. I just wasn't pushing like I have been doing in the past
8:25
This was recently by the way. That said, I had to sit down and ask myself this question and I'd recommend you to ask
8:32
yourself this question as well. Are you happy or just comfortable? By happy, I mean accomplished and fulfilled when it comes to your goals
8:40
And by comfortable, I mean you're just in a good spot financially
8:44
Guess what my answer was? Comfortable. And what instantly came to my mind after that was, everyone's comfortable until they're not
8:53
And of course that brought a lot of other stuff to my head. And keep in mind, I'm sitting down on my couch in the middle of my quarantine thinking about
9:00
this stuff. My mind is just going wild right now. And I was just thinking, look at all these people who lost their jobs during this pandemic
9:08
Look at everyone who got laid off, furloughed, or got their salaries cut because of this pandemic
9:15
I've had neighbors, friends, and even family impacted financially by this pandemic
9:21
So as I thought about that, the questions got deeper and scarier and it came down to
9:25
these two questions. And these were questions that I asked myself. How many missed paychecks will make you feel uncomfortable
9:33
How many missed paychecks will make you go into survival mode? These are real questions we need to sit down and actually ask ourselves in all seriousness
9:42
And the whole idea and the whole point behind this is someone who is frugal is always going
9:47
to be striving for the next financial goal no matter what. They're not just going to get to where they want to be and then just stop
9:53
I did that. I learned from that. I'm growing from that. What I want to take home here is despite how well you're doing, we know you're doing well
10:03
Despite how well you're doing, there's always something that will get you to the point of
10:08
discomfort and it's your job and your job only to make sure you never, ever get to that point
10:15
That's why it's super important to have a savings and an emergency fund
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That's why it's super important that your emergency fund has an emergency fund
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That's why on top of your savings and your emergency funds, there should be a loss of
10:29
income fund that has four months worth of paychecks just sitting in there
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Now of course, it'll take a while for you to build up to that point, but the intentionality
10:38
you put behind it directly correlates with how quick you'll get it done
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You've got to build a financial cushion. Above all else, living below your means is going to be the most consistent and important
10:51
thing that you do. As a 21 year old, fresh out of college, going into the real world by myself with a high
10:58
paying job, with literally no knowledge on how to budget, how to save, or how to track
11:04
my expenses, it was hard for me. It was hard for me because I had to learn everything on my own from scratch as I was
11:12
taking on a management role that I've never done before. I definitely made some mistakes along the way
11:17
For example, compared to my salary, my rent was way, way, way too high and I should have
11:23
opted for a much smaller apartment. Instead, I decided to get a two story townhouse with two and a half bathrooms and two bedrooms
11:32
which I never really even used. What's another mistake? I started investing way, way, way too quickly
11:39
I had a lack of knowledge and the lack of direction in terms of where my money should
11:43
actually be going when it comes to investing. As a result, I lost like $600 per month for like a year straight
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Basically, I put my money into all the wrong places and it didn't get me a step closer
11:54
to my financial goals. This is a problem for a lot of people, but I'm going to share it anyways
12:00
I spent way too much money on eating out. Those are my mistakes, just to name a few
12:06
It wasn't all that bad though. I definitely got a valuable education from all the mistakes I made and now I'm able to
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share these mistakes with you so you don't have to worry about making them
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Even though I still think about the extra thousands of dollars I could have in my bank
12:20
account right now if it weren't for those mistakes that I made, I still realize I did
12:24
a lot of things right and I actually did live well within my means
12:28
I didn't go out and get a new car. I continued to drive the first car I ever got when I was 20 and it was already fully
12:34
paid for. I didn't go out and get the latest iPhone. At the time, the iPhone X had just got released and I was still walking around with the iPhone
12:42
7. I didn't really care about all the hype around the iPhone X
12:45
To me, what was important is that I had a phone and I knew that I had money so I could
12:50
get whatever phone I wanted, but it was just about the discipline for me at that time
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I didn't really want any new tech at that time. I didn't get any new shoes or clothes or anything
13:01
I didn't buy really anything for myself at all. Really just focused on saving and investing my money as a young 21 year old
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Another thing is, I'm a single guy who lives alone. No roommates, no nothing
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I've been living by myself since I was 20 so there was no need for me to go to the grocery
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store as much as everyone else was going. All the families, everybody you see at the grocery store every week or every other week
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There was no point in me going that often. There just wasn't. I found that going to the grocery store once a month at the most was good enough
13:35
As a matter of fact, I challenge you, don't go to the grocery store at all for a whole month
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I guarantee you, you'll still have plenty of food in your pantry, in your cabinets
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whatever the case is. You're going to have plenty to survive on without going to the grocery store
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I think we've been conditioned by society to go to the grocery store as often as we do
13:55
It's really not that necessary. One time I tried not going for a full month. I still had plenty of rice, plenty of beans, plenty of chicken, plenty of everything that
14:03
I needed to live a good healthy lifestyle, but the problem was I was going every other
14:10
week just because everyone else was. That was really the only reason I went
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It wasn't because I really needed to go. I could be a little low on milk, up, got to go to the grocery store and buy everything
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that I still have in my kitchen. Doesn't make a lot of sense
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Not financially it doesn't. But seriously, there's a lot of stuff in our pantries and in our cabinets that just get
14:29
overlooked on a daily, on a weekly, on a monthly basis. Go to the grocery store, you buy some more rice, you already have rice, and then you
14:38
never even get to the one that's been sitting in there for God knows how long. Then you look at it and then it's expired
14:45
It takes forever for rice to expire. You know what I'm saying
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That's a shame right there. What that leads to is a waste of your time going to and from the grocery store, but also
14:55
it wastes your money because you're buying stuff that you don't need and now you have an excess amount of rice, of beans, of frozen foods, of all kinds of stuff that you don't
15:06
need that you're probably not going to eat even a month from now. So you might as well just try what I'm saying
15:13
Don't go to the grocery store for a whole month. I guarantee you you'll see, one, you'll see savings and you'll see more money in your
15:18
pocket and two, that's more time on your hands to do productive, creative things to bring
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even more money into your life. That's the whole mindset shift though. I don't expect you to try it today and it comes natural because for me it definitely
15:32
did not come natural. I felt very uncomfortable doing it, but I was surprised at how well it worked so give
15:37
it a shot. Why not? Here's a mindset shift for you. Think about how a frugal person thinks and acts and then implement that
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Look, I know it sounds kind of weird, but trust me though, I'm not talking about being cheap either
15:50
You don't have to be this guy or this guy. God, I love that show
15:56
I'm talking about being smart with your money, not being cheap. Total difference
16:03
You see, we live in a world of what I call flex culture. We're surrounded by guys and girls who want to flex on their exes or flex on people who
16:11
said that they'd never amount to anything. They buy the new car, they flaunt their salaries, they talk about how much money they have
16:17
they have the biggest houses, they get the nicest shoes, the list goes on and on
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That's not frugal. Don't do that. That is not cold. That is weak
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What Kendrick's saying in that one song, sit down, be humble, slow down some
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You're doing too much. That's the thing. People are doing too much
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They get so caught up in flexing and showing people who's the boss that they end up losing
16:44
themselves in the process. And then instead of them owning money, the money ends up owning them
16:51
That's not you. And it definitely isn't me. So we're not going to act like that
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We're not doing that. And look, trust me, I know it's tempting because there have been people in the past who have
17:01
tried me, who have said what they've had to say, who've demeaned and belittled me
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And now I am what most people consider to be successful, but I'm not going to let that
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temptation override my goals that I have for myself and for my future family
17:19
I'm just not going to do it. I'm sorry. I'm not doing that. As much as you might want to show somebody, hey, I'm successful
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Hey, I'm more successful than you. Hey, I can buy this. Hey, I can buy those new pair of shoes
17:30
I can buy this new car that you want. I can get your dream car today
17:34
You want to say that you want to do that, but it's only going to hurt you in the end
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And this is how I think of it. Your ego should never be more important than your goals. Ever
17:45
It's even the smaller things like not letting the water run when you're brushing your teeth
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Stuff like that. It's using up all the milk that you have before you run to the grocery store and get a whole
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new carton of milk and neglect the one that you didn't even finish in the first place
17:59
It's putting more layers on when it's cold in your house instead of turning the heat on
18:05
Very simple, easy mindset shifts that anyone can do, it's just a lot of people don't do
18:09
it because they prefer convenience. All in all, frugal living is all about knowing how much you make, how much you owe, and how
18:17
much you spend in a month. Now I know that sounds incredibly simple, but hardly anyone is doing it
18:23
And once you start doing it, when you start doing it, people will definitely have a lot
18:27
to say. Especially when it comes to what you can do with your money and what you can afford with
18:31
your money. You know the biggest thing I realized? Just because you can afford something does not mean that you go out and buy it
18:40
People are going to tell you, you can afford it, go ahead, go ahead and buy that new, go
18:47
ahead and buy that, buy that new house, buy those new shoes, buy that new $500 jacket
18:54
They're going to tell you those things. They'll give you a lot of recommendations and input in terms of what you could and should
19:01
do with your money. And by they, I'm talking friends and family
19:05
Ask me how I know. Look here though, as much as it sucks to say what I've had to do and probably what you'll
19:11
have to do is look at the results of the person who is giving advice, recommendations
19:18
or input in general about money. And if their results don't line up with your goals and your aspirations, that's not advice
19:27
you should be following. And again, that's another thing I had to learn the hard way
19:33
But that goes for anything in life. And that's why on this channel I say, you got to be cold with your finances
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I say that a lot. I usually say it at the end of my video
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But the reason I say it so much is because people are going to look at you as if you're
19:47
some cold, cruel person. But really when it comes to being cold with your money and cold with finances, it means
19:54
being sharp. It means being smart and intentional with your money. It means not giving a crap what people think about you, what they have to say about you
20:02
It's making those decisions that benefit you and your family the most
20:07
To put yourself in a position to actually be able to help people financially
20:13
That's what being cold with your money means. It's when somebody recommends that you do something with your money and you say, well
20:19
I'll take that into consideration. But then you don't do it. They might feel slighted because of it, but you got to think about it this way
20:27
You got to do what's best for you. I can give you all the advice in the world, but if I ever say anything on this channel
20:33
that doesn't benefit you, that doesn't make sense for you to do, don't do it
20:38
I'm not going to feel bad about it at all, but some people are going to be like, oh man, that person just being cold and selfish and this and that
20:47
Nah, you're not like that. But anyways, that's the video for today guys
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Thank you so much for watching. My name is Reggie Bryant. This channel is all about personal growth and personal finance so you can control you
20:58
control your finances and control your life. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you in the next video
21:03
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