How to Start Being Frugal: 10 Easy Tips
If you’re looking for the easiest tips for how to start being frugal, you’ve found them. You’re never too young or too old to embrace frugality. Making simple changes to your spending habits will make it easier to save and invest.
1. Create a Budget

First and foremost, create a budget and stick as closely to it as possible. Being frugal means being careful with your money. It’s not about buying the cheapest option available. Frugality involves establishing and maintaining your spending boundaries.
2. Do Your Homework Before Making Purchases

Stop shopping at the first moment of interaction with a product. Do your homework before committing to your purchases. Read reviews, shop around for the best pricing, and sleep on purchases.
When scrolling online and targeted ads tempt you after you’ve searched for them, resist the impulse to buy. Allow things in your shopping cart to sit there for 24 hours before you buy them. Often, you’ll realize you don’t need them, or they’ll have lost their luster before you wind up wasting money on them.
3. Choose Quality Over Quantity

Similarly, choose quality over quantity. When researching purchases, don’t be tempted by low prices on items of lesser quality accompanied by many negative reviews. You will end up spending more when you need to replace it long before a quality item you invest a little more in.
4. Buy Secondhand When You Can

One environmentally conscious way to start being frugal is to always buy secondhand when you can. Between fast fashion, plastic pollution, and everything in between, our planet is dying under the weight of our poor choices.
You can find almost anything on Facebook Marketplace, and several apps exist for secondhand clothing. My most recent score was a $40 dining room table and four chairs with no damage. Shop around and wait patiently. It took me three weeks of checking the marketplace before I found that major score, but it ultimately saved me hundreds of dollars and possibly eliminated unnecessary waste in a landfill.
5. Reduce Entertainment Expenses

One of the biggest money-wasters in America today is excessive streaming and entertainment expenses. Many Americans are paying for services multiple times without knowing it. Streaming started as a way to cut cable and save significant money. However, it quickly escalated into numerous streaming services and a heftier bill. Look for ways to save money on entertainment and take advantage of free events.
6. How to Start Being Frugal About Groceries

Groceries have skyrocketed more than 30% since 2020. Make a conscious effort to cut food expenses. Shop around for optimal pricing, use coupons, buy generic, buy in bulk, and utilize these other ways to save money on groceries.
7. Start Cooking at Home

After saving money on groceries, come home and prepare delicious home-cooked meals. Stop eating out every chance you get. Pack your lunch! Say no to drive-thrus, coffee outside of the home, sandwich shops, and using food delivery apps. If you only dine out once in a while, eating out becomes an exciting date again for married couples.
8. Regularly Declutter

Declutter your spaces regularly. Frugal people tend only to keep what they need and use. Create a decluttering schedule that works for you. For example, declutter with the seasons or only once a year. Once you’ve determined what you don’t need, sell your gently used items on secondhand platforms and apps.
9. Use Reward Apps and Loyalty Programs

Sign up for loyalty programs wherever you regularly shop to optimize savings. Also, dozens of reward apps like Ibotta and Dosh find discounts and give you cash-back rewards for your purchases. Use them to maximize savings and get something in return for the dollars spent.
10. Learn to Do Things Yourself

One of the basics of frugality is learning how to do simple repairs around your home and vehicle. People who master using free YouTube tutorials to sew a button, hem their pants, change their oil, swap their garbage disposal, etc., save hundreds to thousands of dollars while building abundant, valuable knowledge.
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Elizabeth Ervin helps people embrace a change in money mindset to achieve their financial goals. After struggling for a decade as a single mother, consumed by the American debt cycle, she recognizes the value of financial education and lifestyle changes and aspires to motivate others to make those changes to obtain financial freedom. She heavily advocates for praying about and over your finances and speaking positive money affirmations to manifest abundance.