Unless you are someone like Bill Gates or Donald Trump, you have to live on a budget all the time. In these troublesome economic times, many of us are tightening our spending habits even more. I've been a penny-pincher ever since I was a newlywed living in family student housing in college; after seventeen years it's become a lifestyle rather than something I have to do for economic necessity, even though I do still have to do so for economic necessity. (Does that sentence make sense?)For me, saving money is my "sport." It's my hobby. It's fun.
I don't look at finding ways to save money as a chore. It's not the same as having to fold the laundry or clean the kitchen. Instead, I see it as a personal contest to challenge myself as to how much money I can save every month. When I do well it's like winning at Monopoly or Apples to Apples. I just play a game every day.
If nothing else, my positive outlook on being frugal at least keeps me happy.
Like Amy Dacyczyn in The Tightwad Gazette, I have never viewed being frugal as deprivation. When I look at life as though I am a victim (of lack of money, of not being able to buy what I want, of life not being fair, etc.) then I feel miserable. When I view saving as much money as possible as a personal challenge so that I can have as much as possible with spending the least amount of money...well, life takes on a whole new meaning, to use a cliche.
For instance, my husband announced to the family that our level-pay electricity bill went up thirty dollars. (He is in charge of paying the regular monthly bills and managing insurance/retirement/savings funds, while I manage the fluxuating household and medical expenses.) One of the reasons for the increase is the kilowatt rate increase; the other reason is we're just using more electricity. I already hang as much laundry as possible and use the right lightbulbs and do all those typical electricity savings things. Instead of just feeling irritated that our bill went up (notice I said "just feeling irritated"--yeah, I was irritated!) I figured this was just my next economic puzzle to solve. I said to everyone, "Well, we either give the thirty dollars to the electric company or figure if there's something we can give up to keep the money. Which one do we want to do?" We talked about all the things we already did and it looked like we were pretty stumped until my eleven-year-old daughter said, "How much does it cost to run the dishwasher? It takes forever for that thing to run." I told her she's right, we could probably wash them ourselves much faster...but then we have to wash the dishes which does take time...and do we have that time to spare? And does anyone want to wash the dishes by hand? Then I thought of how, in family student housing, we just had a little sink and I'd use rubber gloves when I washed the dishes...I slathered my hands with vasoline, put my hands in the gloves, and washed dishes with the hottest water possible...and gave my hands a skin-softening treatment. So now I'm looking at washing dishes by hand again as a cheap and easy beauty treatment. I volunteer to wash dishes by hand if my daughter, whose job it is to unload the dishwasher, would dry and put dishes away as I washed. We've been doing this for two weeks now and it works well, except for when we cook a ton of meals and freeze them over the weekend so my husband has food to take with him when he's out-of-state for work during the week...then we use the dishwasher. And my hands are feeling really, really soft again, although now I'm using coconut oil instead of vasoline. I'm excited to see how much of a difference this and the few other smaller changes we've made makes.
When my five-year-old asked if we could go to Chuck E. Cheese's someday soon (it's over an hour away from our home...thank goodness! :-) ) I didn't tell her it's too far away and too expensive and we can't afford it right now...instead I said, "That's a nice idea! What can we do to save for it?" This way I'm not being negative, telling her "no," and giving her the "poor us we're broke" outlook.
I want my kids to have the "anything is possible if you're willing to work for it" outlook. You're much more likely to get what you want with the latter way of thinking than the former. The only way to instill that value in my children is if I live it myself...so why shouldn't I?
The next time you get that unexpected bill in the mail or are balancing your checkbook or the car breaks down or your child grows out of yet another size of jeans for the third time in a year...try picturing yourself on a game show where the challenge is to find the best way to solve the problem instead of feeling like the victim of another of life's struggles where you can never get ahead.
As for me...now I am off to get another hand beauty treatment. :-)
