The word frugal is not something everyone likes to hear. It makes some people think of sacrifice and financial hardship. In reality, frugal doesn’t mean that at all. It just means that you are careful with your money and only spend when you really have to.
Being frugal can be an excellent mindset and habit to get into, but it’s not always easy to know how to start. Read on for some useful tips so that saving money soon becomes a daily habit you can enjoy to the utmost with some great results.
Start Budgeting
Before you can do anything with regard to living more frugally or saving money, you need to make a budget. If you don’t have a budget, you won’t know what your current financial situation is, and if you don’t know what your current financial situation is, you won’t know what needs to be improved.
Take a look at all your outgoings to begin with and work out which ones are necessary and which can be reduced or eliminated altogether. This is a great place to start. Once you have done this, you’ll be able to see how much of your income is left after the essentials have been paid for. In that way, you can leave yourself some ‘fun money’ if you want to (because you don’t want to sacrifice everything) and put the rest into a savings account. If you do this as soon as you get paid, you won’t accidentally spend it and have nothing left over.
Shop Around
One of the best things about buying online is the convenience. It’s quick and easy, and it’s done at the click of a button or a tap of a screen. The problem is that this can mean we spend more than we should. Quite apart from the fact that we tend to buy more than we normally would due to how easy it is, we often don’t check to make sure we’re paying the best price.
This is why it’s worth spending a little more time when you shop online to shop around before buying something. You might find the item at a lower price elsewhere, or you might even find something that will work better. In any case, it’s likely you’ll come across something like a Molton Brown coupon that will help you save money too. This is why it pays to spend a little more time and not to buy quite so impulsively.
Batch Cook
For many people, their biggest outgoing – after their mortgage or rent – is groceries and food. It makes sense, in that case, to look at how you might save money in this area. One great idea is to batch cook.
When you cook meals in bulk and then freeze the majority of them, there are a number of benefits. First, you might get some good deals for buying more than one thing in the grocery store. Next, because you always have good food in your freezer, you’ll be less likely to opt for takeouts if you are too tired to cook something (you just need to defrost the food you made earlier and heat it up). Finally, by batch cooking, you might also have enough food for lunch as well as dinner, saving you even more money overall.
