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How to save money frugal living? I am sharing 4 tips on living a frugal yet fulfilling life with his wife Natalie and our two cats Lili and Mom. For us, it is all about getting the most happiness out of every dollar spent and being mindful about 4 spending categories that can get in the way of getting to financial independence.
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In my quest to be frugal, I have found that there are just four categories that tend to give me the most value for the least amount of sacrifice
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Because I'm not trying to sacrifice a significant amount of happiness to get rich
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I'm trying to live life along the way to getting rich. What's up y'all, it's Brian
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For me, being frugal is all about getting the most happiness per dollar spent
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For instance, it's date night, Natalie and I could go to a five-star restaurant
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spend a ridiculous sum of money, $500 on a single meal and get 80 units of happiness
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Or on the other hand, we could spend 50 or 60 bucks and try to make a Beef Wellington at home and get 69 units of happiness
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In that moment, sure, we got a little bit less happiness, but not in the long run
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For one, whenever I spend too much, it starts to weigh on my mind, even the next day
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It acts like a small drain on my happiness that restarts every time I take a look at my credit card balance
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So I'm taking emotional damage. Emotional damage! Second, the opportunity cost is surprisingly high
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Let's say we spent $60 on Beef Wellington and date night. The opportunity cost is actually way more than the $440 difference between the two dates
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because you have to consider how much would it be worth in the future had I invested that sum of money
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One of my goals is to become financially independent, so I like to invest as much as I can
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After accounting for inflation, one could expect that $440 invested in the S&P 500
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over 10 years, getting just average annualized returns to more than double
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So in reality, I'm not just comparing one dinner to one Beef Wellington date night
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I'm really comparing it to 15 more Beef Wellington date nights in the future
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So naturally, food is one of my four categories. That example was a little bit extreme, but food is something that you interact with every day
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So you have the opportunity to spend money on it every single day
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When a category has a high transaction amount, that is a huge red flag for me
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because a lot of small expenses can kind of fly under the radar, but then add up to a lot of money by the end of the year
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So Natalie and I have developed a few tricks to stay frugal in the food category
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Number one, bulk carbs are a no-brainer for us. We like to buy a huge bag of rice
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We'll spend maybe 30 bucks and it'll last us up to six months. We like to throw four or five cups in the rice maker most weeks
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and we always have rice ready to go. Also, pro tip, fried rice is best made with leftover rice
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So we're always primed to make fried rice. Since we don't buy carbs more than a few times per year
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our grocery hauls are mainly groceries. Oh, shoot. Of course, it's breakfast
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Since we don't buy carbs more than a few times per year, our grocery hauls are mainly veggies, which are normally pretty cheap
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and then whatever meat is on sale at the time. On a side note, if you're trying to be frugal
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don't get a cat because you will spend extra money on cat food. Okay
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Whenever we're not in the mood to cook, we like to get carryout, but we'll only get a protein entree
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That way we can supplement it at home with cheap carbs. Buying carbs and drinks at restaurants, in my experience
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is the least cost-efficient way to buy food. In any case, cooking makes a huge difference for us
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and it kind of bleeds into my second category. Natalie and I enjoy cooking, so at times it can double as our entertainment
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In that first example, Beef Wellington was our date night. Another way that you can leverage cooking as entertainment is with friends
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Instead of going out to the bar and spending a ton of money on alcohol
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you can have a potluck at someone's place, and in my opinion, that's way more fun
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In general, we make a serious effort to try inexpensive hobbies. Cooking is always a staple
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and our main hobby right now is actually making this YouTube channel, but in the past, Natalie was really into woodworking
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She could make a lot of the furniture that she used for cheap and then was able to sell it for a small profit when she was finished
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I've always really enjoyed crushing the like button. I used to go rock climbing with a couple friends
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which kept me active and healthy, which also saves money in a different way
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We would pay 75 bucks a month to a rock climbing gym. This would also double as my gym membership
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because they had free weights there as well. Going there several days a week, being active
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hanging out with friends made it pretty frugal entertainment. So things took a turn
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Unfortunately, one of those friends moved away and then the last two of us eventually lost
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Interesting climbing, and I was left with a $75 gym membership, which took me too long to cancel
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This brings me to my third category. Natalie and I take extra care to pay attention to subscriptions and memberships
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This category is easy to lose track of between streaming subscriptions, gym memberships, Costco
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There's just so many ways for a bunch of small expenses to add up, just like with food and entertainment
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But a bunch of small expenses isn't the only way to spend a lot of money
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The fourth category that Natalie and I pay extra attention to are the big ticket items
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I'm talking house or apartment, car, vacations. Housing and car, those are pretty daunting things to try to make a change on
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but at least you only have to do it one time. Unlike with food and entertainment, you have to make a better choice every single day
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So I guess there's a little bit of a trade-off there. Natalie and I could have done a better job on housing
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We would spend way less on our housing expenses had we rented a cheap apartment instead of buying a house
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We're not at the point in our lives yet where we need the space. We have found that owning a house brings a lot of extra expenses
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that add up to a surprising amount of money by the end of the year. We actually made a video comparing housing expenses to renting
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If you're interested, I'll link it at the end of this video. We have done a good job not buying a new car before we need to though
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Cars depreciate in value. It's going to cost you interest, assuming you would take out a loan like Natalie and I would
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So we prioritize affordable cars with good gas mileage and we try to use them as long as we can
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Next, vacations are a big ticket item that we are able to save a ton of money on by never going
5:51
Not really, we love going on vacation and we are able to save a ton of money by using travel credit cards
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There are some tricks to getting the most out of your credit cards and especially the best travel credit cards generally have pretty high annual fees
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So if you don't utilize them properly, they can cost you money. Check out this video if you're interested in seeing the credit card
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that Natalie and I have been using for the last year and we absolutely love it
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Otherwise, check out this video for housing versus apartment. Catch you on the flip side
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