Spending less than you earn is a sign that you might be in control of your finances. But unless you make a ton of money, you can’t afford to buy everything you want and still have enough left to save for retirement/medical bills/kid’s college, etc. How do you balance the two? Frugality. By carefully spending your money, and avoiding spending it when you don’t need to, you can you can cut your expenses and increase your savings. My goal is to save enough to have a comfortable retirement. I make a firefighter’s salary, so there are definitely things that we do to stretch our dollar and save a lot. I want to show you some of the ways the we exercise our frugality, but there are too many to list in one post. We’ll talk about some today, and then we’ll wrap up with the rest in another post.

Our Frugality With…

Cars:

The bad news? I bought my car new. From a dealer (with an interest-free loan from my parents). The good news? That was in 2002, and I still drive the car every day. It’s been paid off for 10 years. I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth out of it, and it still has plenty of life. It hasn’t even hit 150K yet! I just installed a new blower resistor ($22), so now I have heat again! It probably would’ve cost me $75-100 at a mechanic. I know I can’t drive it forever, so when it dies, I’ll be ready. I’ve been looking at replacements, and when the time comes, we’ll be able to buy a 3 or 4 year old car with cash. No more new cars for us!

When my wife’s old car’s transmission went out a few years ago, we donated it. We bought her a 3 year old car with cash. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s newish, has plenty of room, gets good gas mileage, and runs well. She mostly makes short trips with it, but it’s also the vehicle that we take on road trips and camping. I even installed a tow hitch on the back to pull a small trailer that we load our camping equipment into.

We also have a small 4×4 pickup truck. I bought it for $1500 from a 17 year old kid whose girlfriend wanted him to have a car instead of a truck. It’s not new (1991!), shiny (it hasn’t been cleaned this year), or manly (even though it’s model name is Mighty Max), but it’s awesome. It will haul anything I ask it to, go anywhere I want it to, and I don’t have to worry about dinging it or scratching it. And it’s paid for. Try that with a fancy new Silverado or Ram!

I do most of our vehicle repairs & maintenance myself. When I needed to change the water pump, belt, & pulleys in my car, I watched a YouTube video and got it done. Same with the brakes. Even at my overtime rate, I’d still be paying a mechanic more hourly than I’d be making, so it’s worth it.

Heat/AC:

We don’t use our heat or AC. We have a heat pump, but it sits idle for all but 3 or 4 days each year. Three giant white oaks shade our house in the summer. We use the windows (open at night, closed during the day) and ceiling fans to regulate the temperature inside. We only turn the AC on once or twice in a summer on those 200 degree nights when the humidity is 400%.

In winter, we burn firewood (that we scrounge for free) in our super-efficient wood stove. We can keep our house in the 70s all day and night, and all it costs us is the fuel for the saw and gas for the truck. We have a wood splitter, but I split most of it by hand. It’s free, and it’s a great workout – the guys on my crew say that I do “BarnFit.” The only time we turn the heat on is if we go away for a few days and it’s cold out. This keeps the pipes from freezing and the cat from complaining.

Clothing:

Luckily, I have stayed (more or less) the same size I was when I was in college. I can (and do) wear some of the same clothes I wore back then. As long as they don’t wear out, I’m going to keep on wearing them. My style is timeless (I think it is, anyway…).

My employer supplies me with free uniforms that I wear for 33% of my life. Most of our other clothing (except socks & underwear) comes from thrift stores. It’s just regular stuff – no leopard print pants or furry scarves. I have a Carhartt jacket that I bought used on a trip to Nova Scotia for $25. That was 20 years ago, and it’s still in great shape. That’s $1.25 a year for a bad ass jacket. Contrary to popular belief, thrift store clothes don’t spread germs. At least, I haven’t caught anything yet.

My wife isn’t required to dress up for work, so we spend very little on anything fancy (read: stuff that needs to be ironed. I loath ironing.). I got a $300 pair of brown loafers for $4 at Goodwill recently, so if I need to dress up, I’m good to go. If I do buy something new, I’m looking for quality at a good price. I learned the hard way that outlet store clothes are generally crap.

Children:

My wife teaches after-school art classes. She only has to be at work for 3 hours a day, and takes our daughter with her. As a result, we don’t have any child care expenses. We homeschool our daughter, so it serves her well, too. She gets free art lessons and socializes with all the other kids there. Paying for child care can be a huge drain on a family’s finances, so I’m glad we don’t have to pay for it.

We spend very little on clothing and other things for our daughter. Don’t worry – we’re not depriving her. We are lucky to have a large community of friends who have children of all ages. We get clothing, toys, books, etc. passed down to us for free quite often. When our daughter grows out of or can’t use something, we pass it on. We also take advantage of our local library for books (both for information and entertainment), magazines, CDs, and DVDs. My crew makes fun of me because I’m on a first name basis with my librarians. I guess I pay a price for my frugality!

My wife also uses consignment shops to change up our daughter’s wardrobe. She brings items in, and in return, gets a store credit to pick out new things. It works well. If we do buy things for our daughter, we make sure they are high quality. There is too much cheap plastic crap in this world, so we do our best to avoid it. She adores her handmade dollhouse, and will spend hours listening to books on CD while following along in the book. She also loves drawing and coloring, both of which are super cheap hobbies.

Credit Card Debt:

We don’t have any. We use our cards once in a while, but we never carry a balance. I have never paid a cent of interest to a credit card company. The frugality gene in me won’t let me. If we can’t afford something we need, we either save for it or don’t get it (housing excluded, although we didn’t pay for our houses with credit cards). I once applied for a store credit card to get a discount on a suit I was buying. I paid it off by the end of the month, but didn’t need the card in the first place. Back then, I was young and uninformed about how credit cards and debt affected my credit score. I still wear the suit, though.

Stay Tuned

That’s it for now. In my next post, I’ll talk about our frugality when it comes to food, cell phones, recreation, and more.

What do you think? Do you apply frugality in any of the same ways?