Just curious who else is living super frugal

[HeatherLynn]

I had never shopped used. That went first. It started with used furniture or appliances, and then to cars, and now clothes and anything else under the sun. I am desperately trying to get us debt free and I am making all the hard choices right now.

I have taken to shopping at goodwill and consignments stores almost exclusively. No one is getting even sale priced retail this year. I am looking at doing the whole only grocery shopping once a month thing. Not sure I can survive that. I need to cut back how much I drive drastically. These gas prices are killing me. I find my entire way of thinking about money and possessions has changed. I think for the better.

Curious what others are doing. Also curious if anyone else has pulled off the whole grocery shopping once a month.

 

[Two Creeks Farm]

Im headed that way atleast. We have for the most part cut out the extras but still have fun as a family. Wife is a great penny pincher, its me that needs to learn to control things.

We continue to raise the majority of our veggies (have for years but really stepped it up)

I have always hunted for deer and we literally have gone years without spending hardly a dime on store bought meats. Now raising meat birds and layersfor eggs, for both consumption and sale to offset feed etc.

Started hitting estate auctions and yard sales instead of JC Pennies and Walmart.

My youngest son and myself collect aluminum and scrap for a rainy day

I havent bought a firearm in years, used to buy atleast one or two a month, have quite the collection but dont NEED any more

I took to wood turning and sell game calls and wooden bowls

I have my own powder coating shop here at home and do pretty well with it for being a one man operation

I am a Professional Photographer and have used that as my main source of income for the past 5 years(weddings, sporting events, stock work, commercial) I am sub-contracted by every major ATV manufacture in the US of A, am published monthly in 5 or 6 magazines (all paid work)

I sell firewood, heck I sell anything that makes me a few dollars (legally ofcourse)

I worked my rear end off for 19 years, had little cash to show for it but we purchased a piece of ground that allows us to do alot and we can safely afford it. Both my trucks are paid off, car will be in a few more months. Never again will I buy new. Wife feels the same way. Infact we both worked for the same company, no regrets ...well a few LOL

The wife bakes cakes for those in her office that cant do for themselves. She sews for them as well. It isnt much but it helps pay for gas.

Now we arent bad off, we surely arent upside down on our home and we could easily sell today and pay off all of our bills and start over, but we are trying to be smart and see what the economy does before making another move. Our debt is high but its stupid debt and we have to work and be smart to pay it off. We made alot of right decisions and never got to a point where we did not have a fall back but we know we could be doing much better with some control, some more hard work and better choices in the future.

What scares me is the fact that the country seems to be rolling downhill and no matter what happens things wont change for the better....all the more reason to be frugal and thrifty!

 

[DennisK]

With retirement from a major Aerospace company in Silicon Valley, moving to a less expensive area in the Sierra Nevada's made sense. Bigger, newer home, less property tax, more acreage with a small orchard, less stress. I used to suffer heart episodes (atrial flutter) at least once a week...not any more. It's not so much how frugal you are with cash...you can't take it with you...but how you choose to spend your remaining time with those you love....hustle and bustle...or watching the deer run about the yard, enjoying the cleaner air and seeing the stars at night...even with a bottle of Two Buck Chuck...sitting out on your deck on a warm September night with your spouse and listening to the quiet...beats the big city any day. Having chickens to care for, watching them acting out, is a simple pleasure. Volunteering with the local community...that's real living. Before I retired, I bought a book called "How to Retire, Happy, Wild and Free". Nothing about compiling wealth...just how to spend the rest of your life LIVING....I have learned quite a bit about the folks posting here and their efforts to make do with what they have...congrats to all. I will take their recommendations and stories to heart and try to make our community a better place. The best thing I've learned about having chickens is that our garbage disposal unit is unemployed....the little buzzards will eat anything! Cheers to all who have experienced hardship in their lives and have persevered.

I also came from San Jose – born and raised there. I married my high school sweetheart there. I worked my whole carrier there with an large international company – retired in my 50's. I lost my wife to illness in 05. That cut retirement income in half, but I still get along well enough. We owned this property out here where I can see the stars and where I can't hear my neighbors; so this is where I now live. In 2013, I started sharing my life with Jennifer, but she died of lung cancer earlier this year. I'm now in my 70's and I'm dammed tired of saying good by – of being left behind; so I am now learning to appreciate the quiet of being on my own – the simplicity of it all.
With your new freedom and your new adventures, the greatest thing you have, is that you can still say “We”.

 

[lazy gardener]

Why does it take a gazillion sperm to fertilize a single egg?



Because NONE OF THEM will stop and ask for directions.

 

[MoHillbilly62]

Something I have been doing for a couple of years now, is dry canning. I do rice, beans, oatmeal, cornmeal and flour. Process your jars like you would for canning and let dry, set you oven at 200 deg. place cookie sheet in the oven. fill jars to the top with your beans etc.. and place on cookie sheet, keep in oven for 1 hour. Remove 1 jar at a time, closing oven after each jar, place scalded flat and ring on jar and tighten, it will seal as it cools. Your done! Will keep up to 20 years.

 

[DennisK]

This reminds me of an experience I had when I was a boy. I had a newspaper route. The newspaper gave me a route of customers. They charged me a certain amount for each paper, and when I collected the monthly bill from my customers, I would receive a small profit. The thing was, they would always deliver a few more newspapers than I had customers. I would get charged for those extra papers, but that was OK, because I would take them out on the middle road strip at a light and sale the extras to those who were commuting to work – all except one.
There was a family on my route that I liked. I didn’t really know them, but I kind of liked them; so I would deliver one of my spare papers to their door for free. The neighbor, who was paying for their paper found out that they were getting their paper for free, and they went non-linear. The newspaper company made me stop delivering the free paper. The result was that the family received no further deliveries and the neighbor continued paying for their newspaper. No one gained from this experience, except by pulling down the good fortune of someone else. Profit wasn’t real, it was just perceived. This scenario is all too common, and it says much of how we place value on things. Frugality is about real profit, and it represents the most efficient use of materials we would use as opposed to sending that material where it would be of no use to anyone.

 

[byfarmer]

Some frugal fencing & a frugal barn. All discarded material for free and pallets for little cost, some of those free as well. Some new nails, however I also went so far as to straighten nails and using those.














Frame and roof was an old covered sand box from my work, cost me tearing it down.

 

[lazy gardener]

I'm doing my happy seedling dance.

Bought one of those ridiculously overpriced packs of multi-colored cherry tomatoes a month ago. The tomatoes were actually TASTY, for a store bought tomato. There were some dark ones, about 1.5" diameter that were a "chocolate" color, for lack of a better description. So, I saved the best 2 fruits, and fermented, rinsed and dried the seeds. Planted them on the 18th, and have lots of sprouts today! I'll be doing that some more: looking for tomatoes and peppers in the produce section that I can eat and propagate at the same time. BTW, I enjoyed that first pack of cherry tomatoes so much, I bought an other one!

Now, this is me, doing my happy egglet dance.

Candled one carton of eggs in my home made incubator. 14/15 showing good development on day 6, with the last one too dark to see into. Incubator cost about $20 to make, and would have been even less if hubby wasn't such a stickler about the light sockets! This will be my third brood in this bator!

 

[lazy gardener]

1 bar Fels Naptha soap grated very fine. Melt it in a pot of water. (1 qt is enough) Pour this into your 5 gal. bucket. Fill the bucket 1/2 way with very hot water. Add 1 cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda and 1 cup Borax. Mix very well. Continue mixing while you fill the bucket the rest of the way. I use my immersion stick blender, and get it completely mixed before adding the rest of the water. At that point, you can mix it with a long handled spoon. Let it sit over night, and then use the stick blender to mix it up again. Don't be surprised if the stuff morphs into a solid gel mass. Just mix it up. Shake before every use. After I do the next day mixing, I pour some of it off into large jugs, leaving enough room for shaking. If it gets a bit globby, that's not a problem, it will still work just fine. I use about 1/2 cup in front loader. You might need more for top load, or maybe even less, depending on how hard your water is. It's a low sudsing detergent, so perfect for a front loader. Beware, it's very pungent smelling when you are mixing it up. I melt the soap in the kitchen, then finish the mixing process out on the deck. I was working at 20* last time I made it, and heated the water on the stove b/c I didn't want to use hot tap water that had been sitting in the water tank. Not that that would matter!

 

[dunnmom]

Yup, times are tough for my family. There are 6 of us, and it would be hard to make ends meet even if we were middle class. I feel fortunate that we have a place to live, utilities, transportation, clothes that aren't too ratty, and food on the table, so I'm not complaining. We take freebies where we can get them, even if it's from someone's curb, and we shop thrift when we need something we can't get for free, or make ourselves. Curb shopping is actually fun, I'm often surprised at people's definition of trash. We don't have much debt, because we never buy with credit. We grow veggies to help with the food bill, as a package of seeds nearly always produces more than what we spend on them. We are poor, but blessed at the same time.