Frugal Living: Top Five Reasons For Living Frugally

Listen, I’m the first to admit that frugal living is not for everyone. I have friends who would rather have their fingernails plucked out with pliers than live frugally, and that’s fine with me. As long as they give me a call when they are taking stuff to the dump, I’m fine with their lifestyle choice. Boy oh boy, do they ever have great garbage! In fact, since I have first dibs on anything they toss out, I’m extremely happy that they are not frugal.

So, frugal living is not for everyone. We can all agree with that, right? I don’t see Donald Trump reading this article, and I have my doubts if Bill Gates will be dropping by my modest abode looking for tips on simple living.

But what about those of you who are thinking about it, but you are not quite certain that the frugal way is your way? I want you to know that I have been thinking about you, and I’ve got your back! I was raised in the frugal way of life, and now that I am a rational, or at least semi-rational, adult, I have adopted frugality for myself. A conscious choice! Remarkably, I am married to a woman who also believes in it, so we have quite the little frugal kingdom going on here in Olympia, Washington.

Having said all that, I am going to give you five solid reasons for adopting a frugal lifestyle. Of course, there are many more, but these five should be enough to get the conversation rolling and at least help you in your decision-making process. If you are all set then we can begin.

What are your financial goals? Maybe you plan on an early-retirement, or you plan on owning homes and being a landlord. Maybe you need to put two kids through college or you want to start your own business. Whatever your goals may be, living simply and frugally will help get you there faster.

Look at it this way: every single penny you save by adopting frugality is a penny that will go toward your financial goal. Am I making sense or am I making sense? That’s what I thought!

Gee, in today’s world? Low incomes? Frozen wages? Heaven forbid, is that possible?

Yes, I was being sarcastic! Seriously, the economy today sucks for the lower 80% of wage earners. Now, if you believe in the government, then you can rest assured that things will get better soon and there is no need to panic. If, however, you have the ability to produce rational thought, you will realize that things may not get better in our lifetime.

In case you haven’t noticed, labor unions are disappearing, and as they disappear, so goes collective bargaining. How about a real-life example that illustrates what I am talking about? If former corporate employees with college degrees are applying for jobs at McDonald’s, what chance is there that McDonald’s will be raising their wages soon? They don’t need to raise anything because everybody and their mother are looking for a job. The Law of Supply and Demand applies to the labor force as well as it does to products.

So, if you have a low income and/or frozen wages, learning to live frugally just might be for you.

This is a very real situation in today’s world and I will not make light of it. Since 2007 the United States has seen a massive downward shift in the economy, and that shift has resulted in millions of people losing their jobs. This writer personally knows several people who have been out of work for years….not months but years.

So, no job, mounting bills, what do you do? The answer is the same one that many of my relatives had to face during the Great Depression. You do whatever you have to do to survive! I have said this before and I’ll say it over and over again: I do not believe the economy is magically going to improve for the vast majority of Americans. I think the playing field is so tilted that it appears to be almost vertical rather than horizontal.

The only solution, then, is to learn to live within your means and in fact learn to live beneath your means. For many of us, there is no safety net. There is no soft landing if the rug is pulled out from under us, as in the loss of a job, or skyrocketing food or gas prices. We have to find a way to make it and for us, the answer is to turn to frugal living.

So, how is that credit card debt treating you? If you are like many, times are tough, and the best you can do each month is pay the minimum payment on your credit cards, which basically means you are falling further behind each month. Maybe you have college loans that need to be paid, or you want to pay off your mortgage as soon as possible.

Whatever the case may be, there is no healthier financial move that you can make than to reduce your debt and become solvent. Living a frugal lifestyle will give you more money at the end of each month to help pay off that debt.

Now we have come to the reason why this writer has chosen to live frugally. For me, the madness of the rat race was no longer acceptable. I was tired of working fifty hour weeks and falling further behind. I was tired of coming home dead tired each night and having nothing to show for it. I was tired of the stress and the unhappiness that I associated with my lifestyle, and I was never going to keep up with the Jones family, whoever the hell they are.

So I pulled the plug on the whole insane lifestyle. I quit my job, became a writer, sold off everything, paid off everything, and dropped out of the craziness.

Today my wife and I live beneath our means and we want for nothing. We both have peace of mind and we both are enjoying life as never before. The happiness I have received more than makes up for the possessions I do not own. End of story!

Seriously, you do? I can’t imagine why because quite frankly, I have about covered it all. For about 80% of the people who will read this article, one or more of the aforementioned reasons will apply to them.

Again, if you like living the way you are living, then for God’s sake keep doing it. Living frugally is just not for everyone. I get it! What I don’t understand is being miserable in your current lifestyle and not doing something about it. Life is just too short to live that way.

If this sounds good to you, and you want to chat more about it, you can always tune into my blog about the Simple Lifestyle. You can find it here!

I wish you peace of mind. I wish you happiness. I wish you, more than anything else, love!

2012 William D. Holland (aka billybuc)