Every January I go into post Christmas melt down. Pay day comes two weeks early in December to 'accommodate' Christmas but then it is followed by the longest, bleakest month of the year made even worse by the fact that there is now 6.5 weeks between your last pay day and the next. No wonder the last Monday before January's pay day is regarded as the most depressing day of the year.
Late December five years ago while wallowing in the post Christmas excess blues, I spent several days googling frugal websites and came across the book, The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. It had been mentioned by several of the blogs and so I ordered it on Amazon. Of course, if I had been paying attention to the blogs, I would have borrowed the book from the library or bought it second hand but with me it's all or nothing, I have to have it now. I went on to learn that being impatient is one of the reasons why I urgently needed frugality in my life. The book is wonderful. It was compiled between 1990 - 1996 based on newsletters she wrote to her subscribers and so some parts are out dated and since she lives in Massachusetts many of the tips are unique to America. However, the philosophy is sound and the advice to simply not spend money is timeless. I keep her book next to my bed and reach for it whenever I am in a trough and need to feel inspired.
My favourite blog is Mr Money www.mrmoneymustache.com. This guy has been doing frugality for years and so his threads are excellent. When I hit frugality fatigue at the end of February I found a thread on his blog about this subject and it helped to put things in perspective. You need to ask yourself how urgent is your debt and how urgently do you need to deal with it and he has a 5 point scale to evaluate this. At the extreme end of the scale, if your debt is so bad/income so low and your priority is to get food on the table then you are in 'Your hair is on fire' mode and cannot afford to have frugal fatigue. If however, you are further up the scale then maybe you have cut back too much and have the wriggle room to ease up in one area of your budget.
Amy from the Tightwad Gazette suggests starting out gently; finding those areas you can cut back and do so gently little by little until you are just comfortable and then a cut back little bit more. I cut back on everything. I refused to turn on the heating; hot water bottles for everyone. Every night I unplugged all the vampire energy eaters in the house i.e. those appliances on standby until my husband protested, "Enough!" Unplugging Sky cable meant all the back episodes to The Sopranos he had set to record were not happening. He reasoned, "How much electricity are you saving? 32 Euros a year? I'll give you that if you will leave the TV alone." Of course that defeated the purpose.
On a day that wasn't raining and I didn't have to drive the boys to school/college I took the bus into work. The fare is 2.40 Euros each way. To fill up a full tank of petrol costs me approximately45 Euros and that lasts me three weeks even though I average four trips per day. It was cheaper to drive to work rather than take the bus.
The demoralising aspect of reading these money saving tips is that I was doing most of them already i.e. taking a packed lunch to work, eating out less, don't smoke, don't drink alcohol (hardly), keeping up with the Jones. So there was nothing I could do that would drastically save money NOW. Also the more I read on how not to waste money it dawned on me that most people do this stuff already i.e. re use zips lock bags, bring a packed lunch for long journeys, stay in other people's homes when visiting rather than a hotel. I was just late to the party.
This January however, I had to be particularly ruthless as I have one son in college in Boston for the year and while we knew it was coming and had planned for it, getting through each month was harder than ever. Christmas day I locked the credit card in a drawer. Back at work, I finally bought into the 'Latte factor' and brought in my own coffee.
New year's resolution for 2015 - no new clothes for a year. This won't be hard as I am a hoarder. The son in Boston came home for the Christmas break. I de-cluttered his bedroom and filled six large plastic bags. He's a hoarder too. In a fit of generosity I then did my middle son's bedroom although I swore I wouldn't. He's not a hoarder just plain messy but he is doing state exams this year and a stressed minds need lots of space. I filled nine bags from his room.
I then tackled my own room. To my cringing embarrassment after I pulled out everything from the wardrobe including those shelves I can't reach, I found shirts still in their cellophane wrapping that I bought in Hong Kong when I still lived there in 2005. Ten years ago! They were shoved into the back to make room for the new shirts I was buying "because I needed them." Thank God I was alone when I made this discovery. I then realised two things 1) I have more than I need and 2) I have everything I need. This had the happy effect of overcoming the feelings of deprivation I get periodically which drive me to spend in order to feel better.
Another thing I have learned and I suspect every person over 18 knows this too: know what is in your cupboards. Every week I go food shopping which I detest so I never plan it or do a list. I grab my stash of recyclable shopping bags and head to the supermarket in a bad mood. I walk up and down every aisle and pick out what looks familiar and nice. Husband is in charge of unpacking the bags when I got home. As he put away the tinned tuna, he laughed and turned to me, "How much tuna do you think we have?" I shrugged and said, "A couple of tins." He opened the cupboard door wider to reveal 14 tins of tuna. Nobody was eating the stuff but I was assumed every single time I went shopping and reached the tinned tuna section, "Oh yeah, tuna is always useful". I have since cleared out the cupboards, binned the out of date stuff: one tin of drinking chocolate had an expiry date October 1996. On the 1st of the month, I head to Aldi and stock up on a month's supply of non perishables i.e. pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, toilet rolls, etc and my weekly grocery envelope is for butter, milk, eggs and bread. We rarely run out of something now but if we do, it is not a crisis. It does not have to be replaced NOW, there are alternatives and you can do without for a day or two... I love that World War II saying 'Make it do, make it last, use it up or do without'.
In a bizarre twist, when the son in Boston came home for Christmas I couldn't wait to ask him how did he managed his money. There were originally four tenants sharing the house but after a month one of the boys got homesick and came home leaving the other three having to come up with the monthly rent themselves. To his credit, my son did not ask us to increase his allowance. When I asked him how he managed. He told me he allowed himself so many dollars per week to eat and if he ran out of money he simply ate Cheerios until his next pay day. When I asked if he minded that he shrugged, and said, "That's how it is." I couldn't leave it alone and probed further, "But do you not feel deprived?" He looked surprised and said no. Suddenly he sat up and looking at me straight in the eye said, "You're very wasteful, you know? All those products you have upstairs in your bathroom, you don't need half of that crap. I bought one bottle of shampoo in September for a dollar; it's my shampoo and shower gel and soap all in one and I made that last the whole semester." I was stunned and humbled but kind of proud. I have a frugal son! Where did he come from? Are frugal people born with a special gene or do they only arise when money is tight. I know for a fact if I won a lottery of 10 million it would be gone by the end of the year. I only do it out of necessity and while I do get a sense of achievement of making it to the end of the month if I didn't have to do it I wouldn't.
Frugality is a mind set. There's a whole philosophy behind it which helps keep me motivated for now. Those who have that mind set and live by that philosophy even when it is not needed anymore will have the last laugh.
At the end of January my credit card bill only had one page instead of the usual four or five. I thought there was a mistake until I remembered, "Of course, I haven't used it." That was such a great feeling.
Another system I used to get through January was the envelope system. Several frugal blogs talk about Dave Ramsey's Envelope System.
The hardest part about being monthly paid is that when the money runs out there is loads of month left. When I first left school I was weekly paid and it was much easier to manage your money. You got paid on the Thursday and even though it would all be gone by Monday, it didn't matter as you only had to hang on until Thursday. The envelope system is like giving yourself weekly pay. On the 1st January, after allocating for the big bills paid by direct debit I withdrew enough cash to cover groceries, petrol, bus money for the kids and other emergency / miscellaneous expenses. It works. It is empowering to know that whatever gets thrown up in the course of the month you have the critical things covered i.e. food on the table and getting to work/school. It makes you feel you are the one in control over YOUR money; you have enough as opposed to being paralysed by the thought that you have no money.
I now get a buzz out of going to the supermarket with my 20 Euros 'allowance' and a list. Having only 20 Euros cash really concentrates the mind. You treat it like it is all you have left and your mission is to feed your family on it. You really do look for the best value for money, you are forced to decide what is 'essential' and what you can live without for now. It taps into your creative genes. There is a fantastic blog about this written by a A Girl Called Jack who simply had to live on 10 pounds (sterling UK) per week and she did it. It certainly put things into perspective for me and it is inspiring knowing that these things can be done. I read on some blogs how budgeting can be fun. I thought that was stretching it. But I did get a kick trying to get all that was on my list - it wasn't a long list but still - within my 20 Euros allowance. I probably did look a bit batty scrutinising the price per kilo notices, getting down on my haunches to check out the same product, different packaging on the lower shelves and re tracing my steps in order to put something back or change it for something cheaper. I don't know that I will continue to have the energy to do this long term but when your 'hair is on fire' it becomes urgent and I like urgent.
I gave myself a petrol allowance of 40 Euros a week only to find that 40 Euros lasts me two weeks and when pushed even further 45 Euros now lasts me three weeks. My middle son decided he didn't need grinds anymore and that was a welcome saving. His mocks are on at the moment and so that may change when his results come out later in March. The envelope system gives me peace of mind. We are not out of the woods yet nor is there light at the end of the tunnel but one step at a time.
This post set out to be about frugal fatigue but I am now reminded of all the good things about being frugal and so I will persevere. My mother's birthday was at the end of February and my extended family got together to have lunch at Hayfield Manor. I nearly choked at the potential cost until my husband pointed that I was losing perspective as well as my sense of humour. Frugality is not just about managing your money carefully it is also about knowing what is really important in your life and cutting out the clutter that gets in the way of enjoying what is valuable to you. As long as you are lean and careful in the ordinary everyday stuff you can afford to spend on the special occasions with the people that matter.
Another good point made on the thread 'Frugal Fatigue' on Mr Money Moustache was made by a man who said that he was at a particular expensive period in his live i.e. he had teenage children going to college. That put it into perspective for me. Right now half of our net income is going into the education costs of our children. Some day - not anytime soon - they will be off our hands and independent. This is an expensive time for us and this too will pass. And when it does, I will probably want these days back again.
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