FI and Frugality

Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence and Fru­gal­i­ty often go hand in hand with one anoth­er. All one has to do is search Google and tons of fru­gal­i­ty blogs will pop up. A few of my favorites include Fru­gal­woods, Frugaling.org and FrugalRules.

Let me be clear: I’m not bash­ing being fru­gal. I think it’s a great thing to incor­po­rate into your lifestyle. Just read­ing their blogs has made a pos­i­tive impact on me.

As com­pared to these super savers (sav­ing 70+% of their income, or liv­ing off of a strict $2k bud­get), I’m not very fru­gal at all. I eat lunch out more often than I should. I have some­one cut my hair every once in awhile. I live in a way nicer, way fanci­er, way big­ger apart­ment than I need. I bought a sewing machine that costs almost as much as my car is worth. [side­note: the sewing machine has a touch screen and a laser and it’s total­ly awe­some.] I have a new cell phone that costs me $100/mo.

How­ev­er, these fru­gal friends are a very skewed rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the gen­er­al pub­lic. I don’t claim to be par­tic­u­lar­ly fru­gal at all, and yet by the mere fea­ture of me liv­ing below my means and sav­ing a large per­cent­age of my salary, I am actu­al­ly frugal.

I don’t have 3 clos­ets full of clothes. I don’t take week­end trips to a city across the coun­try. I bring my lunch to work often. I have a 10 year old car that’s ful­ly paid off.

The def­i­n­i­tion of fru­gal is pret­ty loose. I mean, I guess the def­i­n­i­tion of fru­gal is pret­ty set. But the act of being fru­gal is what can vary so much. As with many oth­er things, it all depends on what two things or sit­u­a­tions you’re comparing.

I think it’s kind of fun­ny that I thought this was worth enough to write about when most peo­ple are wor­ried about keep­ing up with the Jone­ses. Instead of the Jone­ses, I’m try­ing to keep up with my fru­gal blog­ger friends. Just anoth­er way that FI has influ­enced who I am as a per­son. I’m not about to start prowl­ing the dump­sters in my apart­ment com­plex, but I can cer­tain­ly bring my lunch to work more often. I’ve also real­ized the things I val­ue aren’t things. They’re expe­ri­ences. I’m just as hap­py play­ing fris­bee in the park as I am going to see a movie at the the­ater. I real­ized this last month dur­ing my Buy Noth­ing month.

For me, being fru­gal is tough. I live below my means because I want to. Unlike many mil­len­ni­als, I grad­u­at­ed straight into a great pay­ing job AND I did­n’t have any debt. Not even stu­dent loans. That fact alone puts me well ahead of my peers, and I’m very grate­ful for that. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that means I’m doing this on 100% will pow­er. Doing some­thing because you want to do it and not because you have to is way hard­er. If I were only earn­ing enough to pay my bills, you can be damn sure I’d be a lot bet­ter at sav­ing mon­ey by bring­ing my lunch. But since I have enough spare cash to save, eat out and have fun mon­ey, the incen­tive to cut back just isn’t there.

If I’m being 100% hon­est, I’m kind of stuck in a bit of an apa­thet­ic rut. This is cov­ered fre­quent­ly on the Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence sub­red­dit (www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence), so I know I’m not alone. It’s dif­fi­cult to keep on the same path when every­thing is on autopi­lot and all I have to do is keep on keepin on for the next 10 years. I’m hop­ing I can get a jolt of inspi­ra­tion and a fresh out­look when I go to Ecuador next month to hang with some great peo­ple like Mr. Mon­ey Mus­tache and Paula from Afford Any­thing (among oth­ers!). I’m look­ing into get­ting a side gig- it’s just a quiz­mas­ter for triv­ia night once a week, no big­gie- to help cov­er some of my inci­den­tal costs and to help me get out of the apart­ment to social­ize. If I real­ly want­ed to hus­tle, I could start house and pet sit­ting for peo­ple in the area. I don’t know why I’m not, except for the fact that I feel like being slight­ly lazy. Actu­al­ly, that’s a pret­ty big chunk of why I’m only doing my day job. I think I’m going to do some math and see if get­ting a sec­ond job of some kind is worth my time/ would lessen the time I have to wait for FI to roll around. That sounds like a good ques­tion to ask at the Chautauqua!

 

What about you? Do you think you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly frugal?