Lesser-Known Frugal Tips That Have The Biggest Impact, As Shared In This Online Thread
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being frugal. Who wouldn’t want to save a buck or two, especially in a world of over-the-top branding and marketing that racks up the actual price of something to a degree where you’re paying more for thin air than the actual product itself.
Now, if you want to indulge in all things frugal, look no further than Reddit, as it’s at it again with sharing advice on how to save money either by wasting less of what we already have or investing into something that requires less resources, but brings the same results. Or anything in-between that.
Image credits: Cucumberappleblizz
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If you're thinking about or tempted to buy something, add it to your cart but don't checkout right away - come back to it a few days later after you've had some time and see if you still want it. Consider if it's something worth it for you, if you'll actually use it and get benefit from it, etc.
90% of the time I do this, I'll realize it was just an impulse and delete the item(s) from my cart.
I look at everything (unnecessary purchases) in terms of “how many hours do I have to work to buy this item?” Usually that makes me realize the purchase is not worth it!
I'm not sure this works on really cheap items like fast fashion clothes.
Honestly, I always have my favourite processed foods I typically crave in my freezer. Chicken strips, French fries, pizza, etc. Cooking a frozen pizza satiates the craving for like $5 instead of $20 delivery. Frozen chicken strips hit the spot like wendys or McDonald's, and cost a fraction.
I used to not have these items at home because I wanted to "be healthier" but the truth is, I'd get cravings anyways and buy fast food for triple the cost.
I eventually saw a dietician say "add, don't restrict". So now I've added a green smoothie with 5 servings of veggies, and a healthy meal prepped lunch to my diet. I now eat chicken strips or pizza like once or twice a week each because I already get my healthy food in. A lot cheaper and I'm a lot happier!
This is the proper way to "diet" by looking at it over a longer time span (like weekly) rather than each day individually, or even each individual meal.
In recent days, a thread popped up on r/Frugal, a subreddit dedicated to exercising the right kind of mental approach to how we consider our resources and their allocation. The subreddit has been around since 2008 (quite appropriately, during a severe financial crisis), is home to 3.6M members, and is ranked among the top 1% of subreddits on the platform.
I switched to grocery delivery during the pandemic and even though there's a monthly/yearly fee, I've kept it because it cut my impulse purchases down to near zero and actually saves us money. Spending less and eating less junk.
Fiscal fast once a month.
I'll fuel up my vehicle, get at least 10 days worth of groceries and the goal is to spend absolutely ZERO dollars for those 10 days. So for about 1/3 of the year I don't spend a penny.
Works for me!
When using EBay, put the item you’re interested in, to your “watchlist” instead of your cart. Lots of times the seller with offer you a discount to sell it quicker.
In the thread, Redditor u/Cucumberappleblizz asked folks to share their truly unique frugal tips—advice that they don’t think many people know about.
It didn’t take long for the conversation to generate 1,400 comments and another 1,400 upvotes, providing ample reason to be smarter with your resources by suggesting even ampler methods as to how to pull it off.
Register for your local/state library’s online card. Check out audio and ebooks for free; sure there might be a waiting list, so choose another one while you wait. it’s saved me so much money! edit: changed theyre to there
One thing I've started doing is putting everything that really needs to be eaten in a certain spot in the fridge to remind me that I need to eat it ASAP. I throw away far less food.
I also save every scrap of usable veg in a big plastic bag in the fridge and make stock once a month. I can't believe I threw away so many mushroom stumps, carrot peels, ginger skins and shrivelled green onions, they make incredible stock!
Second comment to add, I just set up a compost container in the backyard that I can add veggies to, so I feel much less guilty when things do go bad cause i can just put it in there and will hopefully have some good nutrients for my plants instead.
Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry.
Don't take hungry kids especially. They'll be tempted enough by the sweets at the checkout even after eating.
Without going too deep into the tips themselves, they all essentially revolved around a key element found in the subreddit’s description: “Frugality is the mental approach we each take when considering our resource allocations. It includes time, money, convenience, and many other factors.”
That last bit—time, money, convenience, and other factors. Reconsider them by optimizing.
Sell anything you don’t use on Ebay. Make some extra money _and_ declutter your space. For example, I bought a TV and didn’t use the stand legs because I mounted it on the wall. Sold the stand legs on Ebay for $30! Also, someone is using it and it doesn’t have to go into a landfill. Win-win!
Organize your stuff. Like all your stuff, including long term storage and things. If you are anything like me you collect and never get rid of anything that still has a use, or might be useful in future, and that CAN truly save you a lot of money… but only if you know you have it, and can find it when you need it. Same is true for your pantry, medicine cabinet, etc etc. If you don’t know right now where everything you own is (or at least pretty close) the odds of you thinking “I need to buy that” when you don’t, or worse, looking forever, giving up and thinking you must have gotten rid of “it” whatever it was, buying a new one… then stumbling across the old one shortly thereafter. Take it from the woman with three air compressors and only two cars.
I screenshot something I think I want to buy. I look at it every few days or so and then when the desire is gone to look at it or research it I know I didn’t really want/need it.
Consider this: instead of going to the grocery store without any idea on what you need, plan it. You know, make a list, coordinate your groceries so you don’t overbuy or end up with leftover ingredients.
This also gives you an opportunity to do your research on whether there are any discounts, what stores have them, and plan several meals in advance instead of having to drive to the store seven times in a week. Yes, it demands time, but you spend less money.
Don’t buy anything unnecessary for the first week of the month & make my coffee instead of buying (I get paid monthly)
I have a French press for my daily morning coffee. It has saved me tons of money.
Idk how unique it is, but "everything but the kitchen sink" soup, which is basically just throwing a bunch of c**p together to make a soup in order to get rid of stuff that's about to go bad or otherwise needs to be used up. You can put so much stuff into soups, and you can freeze leftover soup, too. Really helps to prevent food waste.
We still mask in indoor public places and I am shocked at how much money we save each year because of it. With a kid in elementary school, we used to have at least one sick person in our house at least 12 times a year but my family has only been sick once since March of 2020 (it wasn't COVID) and we've saved probably $800-$1,000 in that time by avoiding copays, deductibles, prescription and non-prescription medications you typically need when you're sick, etc. It also means we almost never use work PTO for sick days, so all of our time off is spent on awesome vacations instead of being sick.
Or just realise as a nation (assuming this is USA) that free universal Health care is the way to go like most of the civilized world.
It goes without saying that planning ahead and doing one trip instead of several also has a positive impact on the environment and your total car mileage in the end will be less because of it.
We can go on and on about it, but let’s do the frugal thing and reuse what we already have by suggesting our own reading on the small ways in which you can help the environment.
Cascading meals and planned leftovers. Meals that the leftovers “lead” or cascade into another. Baked potato one night turns into potato soup the next. Chili can be repurposed into spaghetti sauce or put on top of chips for nachos. I personally roast a chicken with veggies. The carcass turns into chicken noodle soup. I get a couple meals and lunches for four for a price under $30 total.
Chili turns to wrap filling, Gulasch to noodle sauce, chicken soup to chicken salad or wraps (any meat leftovers become wrap filling), leftover wraps become pancakes with nutella filling,left over veggies (not to spicy or salty), rice or bread are for the dog (his food needs to be stretched with veggies or carbs anyway)
My best tip is get used to carrying a refillable water bottle around. We carry a yeti cup around everywhere full of drink. It saves us so much in stops for drinks.
Whenever I travel I prepare a lunch box with healthy options too. Cookies and coffee too.
When you make dinner at home, *before you serve yourself* put some servings into plastic containers for meal prep. This helps with portion control and now you have a couple days of lunch to bring to work instead of buying.
I do this every Saturday. Cook extra and freeze. It's nice to grab something from the freezer and put it in the fridge and let it defrost. In the evenings I just heat it up. As of now: 2x pasta sauce, 2x stir fry, chicken soup: one in the freezer and one in the fridge for tonight.
Anywho, from a material perspective, frugality is definitely about managing your resources more efficiently. But there’s more to it than that.
Frugality indirectly promotes creativity. By establishing a constraint on what folks spend money on, the constraint encourages them to start thinking outside the box. So, if you can’t buy branded clothes, you might start reusing what you already have to mix new styles. Or you say “hello” to clothing swaps and thrift stores, which brings us to our next point—social sustainability.
Delete any ordering apps off your phone! I had doordash and grub hub and didn’t realize just how much i was getting delivery. For any given meal, by the time you do delivery fees, up charges, and tip, you can easily be spending $20 (or more) on DD or GH meals! Since I deleted the apps and either drive to pick up or make food at home, I’ve saved literally hundreds a month.
Find a friend that is also frugal.
For me personally social life is the hardest thing to save money on, because many of my friends spend money quite easily, and always being the only one who insists on having a cheap night makes me feel like a total pain in the a*s.
One of my buddies is also trying to save up money, and so far it has been really nice to have a partner in crime. We made a list of frugal activities, and often do something cheap/free whenever we hang out.
And when we're with a larger group, it's still easier to be cheap together than alone.
The power of doing your homework before making purchases. The cheapest option may not always be the frugal option if your purchase doesn’t have longevity compared to other reasonably priced options.
And I think you learn by trial and error, because sometimes generic stuff is quite good vs more known brands, otherwise you better stick to quality (for example, food and hygiene products)
Frugal innovation has potential for promoting social sustainability.
Having a socially sustainable society means having equal access and opportunities for all members in terms of survival and fulfillment of their development potential. While businesses do like to innovate, that often ends up within certain financial limits that push away those who can’t afford the innovation. However, frugal innovators seek out opportunities to serve these marginalized customers by looking for ways to provide an affordable alternative. And that’s a win-win from a societal as well as economic side.
I save bread bags for all kinds of things, especially transporting shoes (perfect size) and for cleaning the cat box. Tortilla bags are also resilient ziplocks.
Online thrift stores exist. I use ThredUP and 99% of the time I love what I get! Also learn how to sew. I sew literally everything that gets holes (backpacks, pants, jackets, blankets, pillows, etc). It saves so much money. I also started getting more into minimalism.
Sewing saves money is not the whole truth. Fabric ist expensive and you need a lot of other materials that aren't cheap. But it is always cheaper to know how to repair or reuse clothes instead of buying new ones.
I mix Dawn dish liquid with some water in a spray bottle to clean my dishes. Just spray what I need and it really cuts down on the amount of Dawn that I use/waste.
I do that too! (Never too watery because it defeats the whole purpose of cleaning the dishes properly.)
It goes without saying that minimalism is a certain kind of frugality. If you want more money, spend less by buying only what you truly need and make it last.
That in turn might prove beneficial to your own health as a minimalist approach to life entails less stress and anxiety, increased productivity, greater sense of well-being and you’ll be overall happier. This is based on a number of factors, but basically the less stuff you have, the less you’ll have to worry about in the long run, and your pockets will be better off.
Keep track of food in the refrigerator and freeze whatever you are not going to use in a couple of days to reduce food waste.
After you've gotten the discount signing up for a shopping website's mailing list, unsubscribe from the emails.
Always make double or triple batches of anything you cook. Put leftovers into single portion containers and freeze a bunch. When you're so hungry you can't wait long enough to cook (like sudden low blood sugar), thaw some leftovers. It's faster than getting takeout. I've saved a ton of money doing that
I keep a dry erase list of what we have in the fridge and freezer so I don’t have to go looking and I can get a better idea of what to cook this way. Cuts down on food waste
And if you’re worried about being called cheap, hey, frugal isn’t cheap. While those two terms, as well as words like thrifty and stingy, might all mean you like to save money, but in different ways and to varying degrees (good or bad).
Being frugal means you care about the quality as well as the cost. It’s a balancing game of resourcefulness without going overboard in any extreme, and as research shows above, it benefits you in more ways than not. Being cheap, however, only benefits your finances for the sake of benefiting your finances.
Dollar tree. I don’t know if it’s slept on or not but it was for me. You can get the same basic necessities for cheap. And it’s great for a starter home/apartment to get those things when your short on money.
Agreed, but learn to skip items that truly aren't cheaper, like toilet paper.
Basically anything disposable I look and see if I can do reusable. We do it all: cloth hankies instead of tissues, cloth napkins instead of paper towels, bidet, cloth diapers for the kids, reusable pouches for applesauces etc for the kids, soda stream instead of cans, etc.
This doesn't always work: you lose time and money to clean them all the time.I've tried. BTW some friends have tried clothe diapers for their kid, it was awful, very hard to wash, sometimes still stained after being washed...for their second kid, they went back to disposable diapers. In short, having reusable stuff can work for almost everything as long as it's not made of clothe.
Floss!
I do not understand people who don't floss, I can't stand anything being stuck in my teeth at all.
Note: this post originally had 67 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
If you want more tips and advice on how to master that frugal life, head on over to another article of ours and learn the art of saving money.
But, before you do that, let’s make this list even better by suggesting your frugal life hacks in the comment section below!
We started using the app "Too good to go" recently. There are not a lot of offers in my rural area and mainly it's gas stations giving away leftover baked goods for 3-4 Euros but it works well for us. One "order" serves 2 people for dinner and breakfast, plus you get creative with what you get.
The only place in my area on there is a cookie store! 😆
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If you do a lot of walking or time on your feet, get good quality shoes. My family doesn't have a car, so we do a LOT of walking. I even pay more for my 5yo's shoes because the cheap ones wear out in a few weeks; they don't even last a season. A $50 pair of Doc Martins will last him all year, where I would otherwise be shelling out $30 4-5 times a year for Carter's.
Not unique, but we make a weekly menu. Then look up ingredients needed and only buy those. I know what is in my fridge as it's for that week's meals and we usually have leftovers that I put a strip of masking tape on to date when it was cooked and store that front and center of fridge so we know what we already have for quick work lunch or a leftover dinner
We started using the app "Too good to go" recently. There are not a lot of offers in my rural area and mainly it's gas stations giving away leftover baked goods for 3-4 Euros but it works well for us. One "order" serves 2 people for dinner and breakfast, plus you get creative with what you get.
The only place in my area on there is a cookie store! 😆
Load More Replies... If you do a lot of walking or time on your feet, get good quality shoes. My family doesn't have a car, so we do a LOT of walking. I even pay more for my 5yo's shoes because the cheap ones wear out in a few weeks; they don't even last a season. A $50 pair of Doc Martins will last him all year, where I would otherwise be shelling out $30 4-5 times a year for Carter's.
Not unique, but we make a weekly menu. Then look up ingredients needed and only buy those. I know what is in my fridge as it's for that week's meals and we usually have leftovers that I put a strip of masking tape on to date when it was cooked and store that front and center of fridge so we know what we already have for quick work lunch or a leftover dinner
