Simple Frugal Tips That Are Weird But Work

Super simple frugal tips really can transform our budgeting, save us money and get us out of debt.

But many of us devour endless lists of supposedly simple frugal living tips and still end up broke!!!

The problem is, these little tips don’t get to the core of our problems.

And they don’t help us enjoy living well simply in a way we can keep up week in, week out, year after year.

But I have here 8 big simple frugal tips that do just that. They sound weird but they seriously can save us lots of money long term!!

I hope they help.

One Huge Cost I Am Not Going To Talk About Here

Before we start on the simple frugal tips I must mention the elephant in the room that I can’t properly tackle here. And that is housing!!!

Property prices, mortgage payments and rent are in many areas insane.

Paying out 50% of our income on housing isn’t sustainable and there aren’t easy or instant answers.

But asking ourselves some of these big questions may open new doors :

1. Could I build a better life long term in a much cheaper city or region?
2. Can I downsize temporarily?
3. What would I need to change to live well in a tiny home?
4. How could I turn going back to my childhood home into a positive?
5. Would cohabiting with another family e.g. siblings, cousins, work?
6. Is it viable for my parents to sell up completely and live with us?

These may not be what we dreamed of but they may be better paths for us and our families than a financial burden that too easily leads to debt.

Right onto those core simple frugal tips that surprisingly do help …

1. Give Stuff Away

Thoroughly decluttering and giving stuff away might NOT seem like a great way to save money!!

But it forces us to confront just how much we spend – even when in debt – on things we never use or enjoy.

We all live in an era of automated addictive shopping and it costs us thousands we do not have.

Clearing clutter helps us see clearly the core things that give meaning to our lives and protects us from the manipulative marketing that cons our hard earned cash out of us.

So use this simple declutter secret to build the foundations of a simpler frugal life that’s way more fun!!

2. Fork Out For New Stuff

My second core tip for a simpler frugal life that saves big money is actually to go out and buy stuff!!

Sounds weird right?

But the thing is we’ve all been conned into forking out over and over again for disposable stuff.

Week in, week out we throw our money away on disposable cleaning products, toiletries, food wrap, tampons, diapers etc. Over the years that’s crazy money going to trash.

Investing in a few core good quality reusable products that last can slash our grocery bills in a few months.

So use this simple guide to reusable product swaps to start saving surprisingly big money right away.

3. Stop Stockpiling

Stockpiling can be a great way to save money if we are honestly :

1. Debt free
2. Super organised
3. AND only stockpile stuff with a long shelf-life we genuinely use.

BUT stockpiling can cost us more money if we can’t tick off these three!

Discounts v Debt Payments

If we are in debt it’s only worth bulk buying if we save more than the interest rate on our debt. If it’s credit card debt those bulk discounts need to be at least 25% to be worth it.

If not we save more money paying down debt than on discounts.

Super Organised

Saving money through stock piling also needs us to be super organised.

And let’s be honest, most of us aren’t and all too often end up chucking out food past it’s eat by date.

Long Shelf-Life Staples

It’s easy to fall for the homestead pantry look on Pinterest with all those gorgeous jars on pine shelves full of lentils and the like.

It’s lovely.

As long as we actually eat lentils. If we don’t our pretty pantry is a recipe for wasted food and wasted money.

So if these sound like you stop stockpiling to save money and simply focus on slashing food waste.

4. Quit Meal Planning

We are always told careful meal planning is the secret of frugal food. For many of us it is anything but.

Meal planning is over complex, stressful and hard to stick to.

Endlessly researching new recipes and re-writing shopping lists is not simple and constantly cooking meals we don’t know by heart is a sure fire way to get ourself in a tizz!

Which is why we so often fail at it and bust our budget on far-from-frugal takeaways and ready meals.

The simple frugal answer is meal looping through core recipes, i.e. cooking how our grannies did :

1. Come up with 10 simple meals
2. We know by heart
3. Based on common core ingredients from the cupboard
4. And bits from the freezer (granny didn’t have that luxury did she?)
5. And loop …

It lets us get cheap meals on the table fast from scratch on autopilot.

For simple recipes the whole family can easily learn by heart check out these frugal food ideas …

5. Always Buy Good Bread

Much cheap bread is a con.

It may be super soft but even “healthier” wholemeal varieties don’t fill us up and don’t keep us full.

That’s basically because they are crammed with additives rather than just basic flour, yeast and salt …

So we end up eating more slices for breakfast toast or sandwiches and then want even more food later and end up with digestive problems!!

A good quality basic loaf – minus the gunk – can cost double but work out cheaper as we don’t eat so much and it’s less likely to make us sick.

So pay more for good gunk-free bread or learn to make your own super simple frugal bread …

But Aren’t Carbs Bad For Us?

Sadly carbs are now a problem for many of us but it’s often the added gunk causing digestive issues.

And good quality gunk-free carbs are the simplest way to eat well cheaply.

If we keep active – walking more daily – and balance them out with plenty of vegetables and great quality protein carbs are less likely to cause problems like acid reflux, constipation and gastritis.

6. Splash Out On Pricey Meat

Splashing out on meat does NOT sound like a great way to be frugal!

But it can be.

If we fork out for meat we want it to be rich in critical minerals like iron and B12 that are hard to get from other food as well as protein.

Cheap cuts of chicken only have half as much iron as beef and give us only 25% of our daily B12 needs.

So red meat can give us more bang for our buck and help avoid big health issues from iron deficiency.

Splashing out on a big joint can also be a cheaper way to eat great meat to improve our health long term.

A shoulder of lamb cooked on the bone will give you over 3 days :

1. An amazing roast dinner
2. Stew with super healthy bone stock
3. Pie from stew leftovers.

And a joint of beef can give roast dinner PLUS cold cuts for lunches :

If we spend more on nutritionally dense meat half the week we can afford to be super frugal with bean and pulse recipes other days without ending up nutritionally deficient …

7. Get Addicted

Addiction does NOT sound like a sensible simple way to live frugally.

But we all live in an addiction economy and are constantly hooked into habits that get us to spend money we haven’t got.

It’s very hard to escape those hooks. Even in the privacy of our pyjamas we chase the endorphin rush of online shopping, gambling or worse.

The easiest way to protect ourselves is to find a healthy obsession of some sort that doesn’t cost a thing.

Curiously, decluttering is a good one.

Chipping away with a daily declutter or weekly power purge unleashes endorphins and our competitive instincts to clear all our clutter!!

Other healthy obsessions that tie us into spend free daily habits are :

• Learning a language on Duolingo where you compete to get promoted and escape relegation.
• Other gamified learning apps e.g. :
  • Yousician – playing instruments
  • SoloLearn – coding
  • Mimo – coding
• Walking 10,000 steps daily (starting at just 3,000 is still great!).

• Increasing the number of sit ups / press ups etc you can do.
• Sticking to a daily cleaning routine.
• Starting a simple garden.
• Litter picking & keeping your street or block spick and span.
• Shooting hoops.
• Logic problem puzzles e.g. Murdle.

Different things work best for different people but simple obsessional healthy habits can protect us from the epidemic of addictive spending.

8. Plan A Pilgrimage

Our final frugal tip – plan a pilgrimage – is just as weird.

But many of us, trapped on a wheel of earning and spending without any sense of what it all means, simply lack purpose in our lives.

That lack of purpose makes us very vulnerable to addictive or crazy spending where we blow everything.

The pilgrimage is a chance to step off the wheel and immerse ourselves in what really matters to us deep down and long term.

Obviously, not all of us have religious faith and grand pilgrimages like Camino Santiago are NOT exactly cheap, frugal journeys.

But there are cheap options – fellow Brits can follow St Cuthbert’s Way to Holy Island or explore any of these old British Pilgrimages – and we can create our own journeys both real and symbolic …

1. Return to childhood home.
2. Visit ancestral home land.
3. Meet up with extended family to share roots and origin stories.
4. Collect community memories so they are not lost.
5. Conquer a group of mountain peaks or a family of hills.
6. Walk the length of a river or canal.
7. Build a church.
8. Build a community garden.
9. Master a deep skill with your hands e.g. piano, carpentry.
10. Rescue a pond or a wilderness from garbage and pollution.
11. Plant a wood.
12. Start an orchard.
13. Create a wildlife garden.
14. Restore an abandoned building.
15. Write a book.

Giving time long term to something bigger than us gives back real value to our lives so we don’t go chasing the cheap endorphin hit of crazy clutter and we do have the resilience to fall back on when times are hard.

I do hope these simple frugal tips help you build an affordable life you can truly enjoy long term.

For more practical ways to save money check out these posts :

• 101 Things To Stop Buying
• Make Money Selling Clutter
• 50 Frugal Food Tips
• 50 Energy Saving Tips
• 30 Money Saving Products

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