30 Tips to Be Extremely Frugal (this saved me THOUSANDS) ｜ frugal living + minimalism

Everyone says I'm crazy for this, but I only get my haircut once a year and that habit alone saves me over $500. And that's just the beginning. And if you're interested in saving a lot of money fast, then you'll love this list of 30 somewhat controversial tips for being extremely frugal. Let's dive in. Hi there friend. And welcome or welcome back to my channel. It's in life. My name is Marissa and I'm a minimalist with over 15 years of frugal living under my belt, which has allowed my husband and me to save between 50 to 75% of our income every year and eliminate $250,000 worth of debt, allowing us to become debt free for over 10 years through the principles of minimalism and frugality. I've already shared the first tip, which is cutting my hair once a year. And tip number two is that we also cut our boy's hair at home, which we've been doing for years and has saved us thousands of dollars. And all it took for my husband and I to learn how to do that was watching one 15 minute YouTube video all those years ago and spending around $40 on an electric clipper and barber cleanup set. Next up, extreme frugal tip number three is to save money with subscription churning. And if you've never heard of subscription churning before, basically what that means is that instead of paying for all of the subscriptions and services that you want to use year round, you only pay for the one or two that you need at any given time. And basically what you do is you activate a service, watch all the shows you want to watch or listen to all the things that you want to listen to, and then immediately cancel when you're done with that before signing up and moving on to the next subscription or service. So for example, when you're done watching high potential on Hulu, you can cancel that and you can sign up for Netflix to catch up with the latest season of Bridgerton. Most people don't have endless time to binge watch all the shows and movies on all of the different streaming services anyway. So it makes sense to rotate through them so that you're only paying for one at a time and then canceling them before moving on to the next subscription churning also works for apps. And sometimes if you keep an eye out, you can even get huge discounts or freebies. For example, I love audio books, but I had unsubscribed from audible a while back. So when I recently saw a special offer from them land in my inbox for two free audio books, if I signed up again, I immediately signed up, got my two free audio books and then went and canceled my membership, saving myself the $15 I would have paid when that monthly fee came due. So there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of subscription churning when you can. I forgot where I put my microphone. This next tip has been extremely controversial whenever I've shared it. And that is to only buy books once you've read them. And once you know that you'll actually enjoy them and want to own them. My argument here is that buying books is a lot like shopping for new shoes. It's a good idea to try them on first and make sure they're a good fit for you before you spend money on them. And this is coming from someone who loves reading, but also who used to spend way too much money on books that just sat on her shelf, collecting dust and made her feel guilty for not reading them and making it a habit to borrow books from the library and ensure I like them before I decide if I actually want to buy my own copy has literally saved me thousands upon thousands of dollars. And yet, when I say this, for some reason, it makes the other book people absolutely furious. And some of them have even felt compelled to write me entire novels as to why my opinion is wrong. And how dare I? So as we go through this list, here's a gentle reminder that nuance exists. And just because I use and enjoy these frugal habits, that doesn't mean I'm trying to force it down your throat. The bean soup isn't to your tastes then don't eat it sis. But speaking of libraries that actually leads me to the next frugal tip on this list, which is that you can save thousands of dollars just by signing up for a free library card. And that's just when it comes to the most common types of physical media that people can borrow such as books, magazines, DVDs, and CDs. And then on top of that, our library and a lot of other libraries that I know of also have tons of other things besides books that you can borrow. And let me just go down the list and read you some of the things you can borrow from our library. You can borrow air pumps, audio cassette converters, beach jam kits, bicycle repair kits, bike locks, birdwatching kits, blood pressure monitors, Blu-ray and DVD players, bocce ball sets. Oh my gosh. It's been so long since I played bocce ball. I feel like my family needs to do that this summer. Boom boxes, Braille Uno, car diagnostic tools, CDs, players, crochet kits, disc golf sets, easels for artwork, GoPros, karaoke kits, and even metal detectors. So you can go find that coin at the beach. So never underestimate the money saving potential of your library card. This next one is probably going to ruffle some feathers, but one of the biggest frugal living hacks of all time is to never live alone if you can help it. And this is because housing is typically one of the biggest expenses in most people's budget. So if you can safely and wisely share that cost with a spouse, partner, roommate, sibling, parent, adult child, or even by house hacking, that could potentially save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars every single month. I feel like nowadays, this is probably a very unpopular opinion and there are even entire genres of videos where women, especially younger women will make videos about them living alone and sharing and showing off their daily routines as someone who lives alone. But honestly, I don't think that kind of lifestyle is safe or even realistic for most people. Even though I consider myself a very independent person and I've basically been out on my own since I ran away from home when I was around 17 and 18 years old. Since then, I have always lived with someone and I've never lived on my own a single time. And I wanted to say this because I recently got a comment from a young follower who said it was her financial goal to move out and become independent. But speaking from experience, it's a really good idea. Even if you move out of your childhood home to still find people that you can share living space and living expenses with sharing housing costs can be one of the fastest ways to lower your expenses on a monthly basis without having to go to extreme measures. And speaking of which, that leads perfectly into the next tip, which is to make sure that you marry the right person because the partner that you choose to spend the rest of your life with is one of the most important decisions you can ever make, not just emotionally, but also financially. It can be incredibly hard to pay off debt and build wealth if you have one partner that's extremely frugal and another who's a complete spendthrift. So it's no wonder that financial disagreements are one of the leading causes of divorce and responsible for anywhere between 20 to 40% of all divorces, at least in the USA. But happier marriages don't just mean more wealth. They also can mean a longer and healthier life. In fact, research has found that individuals and happy or highly satisfying marriages have roughly a 20% lower risk of mortality compared to those in unhappy marriages. Like I said, this is one of the biggest decisions most of us are going to make in our entire lives. So make sure you take your time searching for a Mr. Or Mrs. Right. Number seven is to inflation proof your savings. As I do my little Dr. Evil spin in my chair here. Honestly, this is one thing that drives me crazy about the frugal living community sometimes, which is that people will get so caught up in penny pinching and tips and habits to save a few cents here and there while completely neglecting that they need to be growing and investing their money and making it work for them. And I think a lot of people don't realize that if they just let their money sit there in a regular old bank savings account, they're basically losing money every single year because inflation is going up and it's eating away at that money. So it's a good idea to invest that money so that it can grow instead of shrink. And one of the best ways to do that is with an index mutual fund. And if you're not going to do that, at the very least, you should open up a high yield savings account because whereas the average bank savings account interest rate will earn you around 0.5% of interest every year, a high yield savings account. Right now, the average is around 4%. Last year I did a no buy year and part of that challenge was putting the money that I saved every single month into a high yield savings account or an HYSA. And since the end of that challenge, I haven't put in any more money into that emergency fund, but I'm still making $50 more every single month and that's only going to keep growing over time. So I will be sure to link to the HYSA that I use down in the description box below for you in case you're interested in checking it out. Or you can always just go and do a quick Google search to see what the best interest rates are right now. Another money saving tip is to go low maintenance. So after becoming a minimalist and being more frugal, I buy clothes that don't require very complicated care. Like I wouldn't buy anything that requires dry cleaning and I don't get my nails done so that I don't have to spend money every month getting them manicured and maintained. As a rule, the more low maintenance you are, the more money you'll save. So keep that in mind. And speaking of which, instead of trying to cut expenses here and there, it can be very effective to eliminate entire categories to save a lot of money all at once. So for example, I cut out all spending for hair and beauty related products. So I don't buy or own any specialized hair tools other than a hairdryer. I don't buy perfume. I don't buy nail polish or go get manicures or pedicures. And when it comes to makeup, I do wear makeup, but I stick with the ones that I like and that I've been using for years. And I only replace them when the ones that I own run out. Speaking of which number 10 on this list is to avoid the pink tax, which is another pet peeve of mine because why in the world should a razor cost more for women just because it's pink. And yet this is something that brands and companies do all the time. Basically just slapping on the color pink or purple to make a product look more feminine and then selling it to us for a increased price tag. So I try to do my best to buy non pink tax products as much as possible. And I'm not above buying some men's flannel shirts to wear or like I have right here, a men's razor. Next up, number 11 is to stop washing your clothes and towels. So often, not only is this really bad for your clothes and your towels because it makes them wear out really fast, but it also wastes a ton of energy, washing and drying all of those loads of laundry. And whenever I think of all the money that goes into the water bill and the electrical bill, all I can hear in the back of the mind is kaching, kaching, kaching. In our house, we have a rule that we don't wash things unless they're either visibly dirty or you hold them up to your nose and they have a certain, shall we say, smell to them. And in that case, you can put it in the dirty laundry basket, but otherwise I don't want to see those clean clothes in there. Speaking of laundry, number 12 is to hang your laundry up to air dry as much as possible. And I have to admit, this is something that I totally took for granted before I met my husband as a spoiled American. But then when we moved to Germany for four years, we didn't even have a dryer for our clothes. So I got used to hanging clothes and towels up to air dry and it wasn't as bad or as inconvenient as I expected. And not only do air dry clothes smell absolutely amazing, but it also saves you money on energy costs. Now I want to move on to talking about how to save money by cutting back on spending, particularly impulse spending. But before we get to that, I want to teach you two questions that you can ask to decide whether or not something is worth spending your hard-earned money on. And those questions are, first of all, would I buy this if nobody else saw me purchase it but me? And number two, would I buy this if I had to pay full price for it? I think that between these two questions, you can cut out 80 to 90% of your impulse spending because the first frames the question as to whether or not you're buying something for the status of owning it versus the utility that it's going to provide to you. And the second question is good because a lot of frugal people can get so caught up in sales and bargain hunting that they completely neglect to ask themselves whether or not they need and will use something versus whether or not they're just trying to buy it because they have FOMO and they're afraid of missing out on a good deal. So the next time you're tempted to buy something, keep those two questions in mind. Number 14 is to keep an impulse spending journal. And this is something that I did as part of my no buy here last year. And what this means is that basically you keep track of all of the times that you're tempted to buy something, whether that's when you're doom scrolling on tick tock or whether you're going to target for school supplies and you get sidetracked in the home decor aisle like I maybe still tend to do even as a minimalist. And instead of giving into those impulse purchases, what you do is you take the time to pull out your journal or your notepad or your phone or wherever you're keeping this information and write down the date where you are, what it is you're tempted to buy and the price of the thing. And then give yourself a week or 30 days and add all of those impulse spending temptations up. And I think you'll be shocked at how much money you could potentially save by not giving into those impulse purchases and bonus points. Number 16 is to put your spending on a diet and stick with me here because this one is going to take a little bit of explaining over the years. I've noticed that trying to get good at saving money is a lot like trying to lose weight. And in the wellness community, studies have found that humans are notoriously poor at estimating their daily calorie intake and expenditure. In fact, the data shows people typically underestimate calories eaten by 200 to 300% and overestimate calories burned through exercise by 300 to 400%. And over time, all of those errors quietly add up to hundreds and thousands of extra calories. And then we step on the scale and wonder why the number is going up instead of down. And most people do the exact same thing. When it comes to money, we underestimate what we're spending. We overestimate what we're saving. And then we wonder where our paycheck has gone at the end of every month, which is why one of the most powerful frugal habits you can build is the habit of budgeting and tracking your daily saving and spending because it's almost impossible to improve a financial habit that you aren't measuring. And if you'd like a little bit of extra help with this, I wanted to let you know that my 50 page minimalist budget bundle is on sale right now. And not only does it include 12 months of daily spending trackers and budgeting templates, but it also has no spend challenges, debt payoff planners and challenges, weekly meal planners to help you save money and so much more. So like I said, if that sounds good to you, you can find that printable link down below. Number 17 is to find free ways to get your dopamine fix over the years. I've noticed that a lot of our spending isn't really about the thing at all, but rather the cheap hit of dopamine that we get from anticipating buying thing. We shop because we're bored. We shop because we're stressed out about work. We shop because we're lonely and we shop because we're overwhelmed. So shopping becomes a quick and easy way for us to escape those feelings with a quick rush of feel good dopamine. But the problem with this is that rush of dopamine fades fast. And what you're left with is a pile of things that you probably didn't really want or need a lot of wasted money and a huge sense of buyer's remorse. And I do think a lot of this can be blamed on our modern society that has conditioned us to be good little consumers and think that whenever we have a problem or feel uncomfortable, we should go out and solve that by buying something. When in reality, the best way to feel better is actually by doing the kinds of things that don't require you to spend money at all. Things like going for a walk outside, picking up to call a friend instead of texting them, sitting down with a nice cup of tea to read a great book or getting lost in a favorite hobby such as gardening or knitting something. And all of those things can give your brain the same feel good reward without breaking your budget. And if you struggle to come up with ideas or would like some fresh new ones, be sure and go check out this free dopamine menu that I've linked down below in the description box and can comment so that you have over 30 ideas of free ways to get a dopamine fix without having to spend money. Number 18 is to take control of your stuff by recognizing the CMT paradox. And this paradox is based on a famous mantra or quote in the frugal living and minimalism community that goes, look around. All that clutter used to be money. All that money used to be time. I think that once you recognize this harsh truth, you can't unsee it because every time you look around your home, you'll realize every single item sitting in your house represents hours of your life that you'll never get back. And when you start looking at your possessions this way, you're a lot more motivated to be intentional with how you spend your time and money. Speaking of clutter, extreme frugal tip number 19 is to sell your unwanted clutter. A lot of people assume selling their clutter isn't worth it. And while that might be true for certain types of items, I'm looking at you beanie babies. Sometimes it's worth it to see how much your stuff is worth and sell it for some easy money behind me. You can see some of the vintage audio equipment that the previous owners of this home left behind when they moved out. And I had been procrastinating about selling this stuff for a while. And when I finally went to sell it, I was shocked at how much people were willing to pay. This is an envelope from the last purchase, which was a thousand dollars just by itself. And then just yesterday I sold another set of vintage audio equipment to someone on Facebook marketplace for $200. Often the best way for you to decide if it's worth it or not is to go on eBay and type in keywords related to the item that you want to sell, and then toggle the tab that says sold price. And then you can see how much that kind of stuff is selling for. So you can decide if it's worth your time and effort. This is actually something I teach in my decluttering course in the bonus mini course on how to sell and get rid of your clutter. And one of my students recently wrote that she is selling her jelly cat collection and doing really well. Some of the rarer ones even went for more than what she paid for. And her daughter has even been helping her and they raised enough money to go to a concert that both of them were excited about and wanted to do so much more than own a bunch of jelly cats. Like the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. So see if you have any treasures lying around your home that maybe you don't want, but you can convert into 20, 50, a hundred dollars or more. Okay. This next one is probably going to make the Starbucks girlies come for me, but I'm just going to come right out and say it, that making your coffee at home is one of the easiest ways to save money. Depending on your beverage of choice, whether you drink a plain black Americano or a fancy latte, you can easily save between 700 to even $1,800 per year just by doing this. And don't feel like you have to shell out a thousand bucks for a fancy Revel espresso maker either. You can keep it as simple as you want. When my husband makes coffee in the morning, all he does is use this pour over coffee cup on top of this free Yeti cup that he got from one of the businesses that he worked at. And then what he'll do is once this is full, he'll pour it into cups for us. And not only does this save us a ton of money and keep things simple, but the coffee tastes just as good, if not even better. While we're in the kitchen, let's talk about the 97% rule, which is one of the reasons that we're able to save thousands of dollars a year on our food expenses. And that is because we cook almost all of our meals at home and between breakfast, lunch, dinners, and snacks, 97% of them are homemade by yours truly, or sometimes my husband on occasion. Seriously, I actually sat down and calculated this. We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus one snack session every single day. So four of those per day times seven days a week times 52 weeks per year. That's a huge amount of money you can potentially save just by making most of your meals and snacks at home. And then on the rare occasion that we do go out to eat, it actually feels like a treat and not just something that we're doing because we feel lazy on a random Tuesday. The next tip is the cook once eat twice rule. And what this means is that whenever you're making a meal, whether it's lunch or dinner, make enough for another meal or the next day as well. So for example, right here behind me, I have some Chinese dumpling lasagna that's left over from last night. So last night I made a double batch in our Chinese steamer and we ate half of it. And this is what's left for the next day. Honestly, doing this is one of my absolute favorite ways to save time, money, and energy in the kitchen because there's dinner and there's lunch for the next day. And every time you do this, you're literally reducing the amount of effort that you're putting into making your meals by 50%. The next hack is great for those days where you are really crunched for time, or you just don't feel like eating at home and are craving takeout, but you still don't want to spend a ton of money. And that is to get your eating out meals from the grocery store instead of a restaurant. One of our favorite things to buy when we're in the mood to use this hack is a Costco rotisserie chicken, because as a family of four, we can bring home a Costco rotisserie chicken and eat that for dinner one day, and then still have enough leftovers for another meal the next day. So that one $5 expense literally feeds us a total of eight meals, which means that we only spent $0.63 per serving. And it becomes really satiating when you pair it with other easy and cheap items such as pastas or dried beans and rice. So this is a great hack for when you want the convenience of having a dining out experience without actually having to fork over a ton of cash for it. Number 24 is the BYOS rule. And I'm sure you've heard of BYOB, but BYOS stands for bring your own snacks. So as a mom with two hungry and energetic boys, I literally never go anywhere without bringing along my own snacks. I learned this the hard way when my kids were younger and I would go to the park or the play zone, and then they would end up hungry or thirsty and I didn't have anything prepared. And when you're out and about, they charge a huge convenience tax for buying snacks and drinks at locations like this. So nowadays I always make sure to keep a granola bar, some nuts, trail mix, crackers, or something similar in my purse, backpack, or car. Just the other day, we invited two friends of ours to come along with us to a pool party for Memorial Day. And I was able to tell those moms, Hey, don't worry about snacks. I've totally got this. And all I did was I made a ton of homemade popcorn and I put it inside these leftover cookie tins to take along with us to the pool, along with some healthy snacks like oranges and simply being prepared like this has saved me a ton of money on snacks. Speaking of these cookie tins, the next frugal tip is to repurpose free things for use around your home. One of the best ways to save money is to build a frugal mindset that allows you to think outside of the box and see potential in things that other people might not see. Cookie tins can become storage containers for popcorn or arts and craft supplies. Glass jars can become herb containers and gift bags get reused. Now as a former hoarder turned minimalist, I do need to set boundaries for myself as to how many of these kinds of things I can keep. And this is when I implement the use it or lose it rule. So when I keep something, I have to make sure that I'm actually using it and if not, I need to let it go. But the next time you're thinking of buying something to fulfill a particular need, take a look around your home and see if you can get creative and find something that you already own and shop your home for that purpose instead. Another frugal tip is to stock your pantry the right way. And this is a huge mistake. I see a lot of parents making on Instagram and TikTok where they'll be going out and buying a ton of busy drinks and processed cereals and snacks at the store instead of buying simple and cheap ingredients that they can use to make a ton of different recipes. And one of the best ways to save money on food is to build your meals around real whole cheap pantry staples, such as things like dry beans or old fashioned oats. And I can use both of these to make a ton of different recipes. Take these oats, for example, not only can I use them to make oatmeal, but I can also make things like overnight oats or baked oatmeal. And foods like this give you a tremendous amount of nutrition for very little money. And this is probably one of the tried and true ways that our grandparents stretch their food budget really far when money was tight. Number 27 is one of the most controversial tips whenever I share it on my channel. And that is the double up rule. And the example that I use for this is when I make tea, what I'll do is I will use the same tea bag twice. So I'm basically doubling my usage for one single product. And something else that I used to do when I was much younger and had much less money was I would use the same pair of daily contact lenses more than once. So instead of wearing them only one day, maybe I would wear them two or even three days. And before all of the doctors and ophthalmologists jump on me and attack me for this, I just want to say, I'm not recommending anyone else do this. I'm just sharing what I used to do personally. And now that I'm older and my eyes are much drier, I can no longer get away with this habit like I used to, but the double up rule still stands. And before you automatically replace something, ask yourself if it truly needs replacing yet. Sometimes the answer is yes, but oftentimes you can find, you can get more usage out of that item. Next up, if you're serious about saving money, one of the best places you can look is your vices, things like alcohol, cigarettes, vaping, but also gambling addictions like lottery tickets, or maybe sports betting are all things that you can cut out of your budget that will save you a ton of money. Not only can these habits cost a fortune over time, but many of them actively work against you or your health at the same time. Few financial decisions give you a double win quite like cutting out something that is actively hurting both your health and your wallet. This next one always makes someone mad whenever I talk about it. And that is to stop buying gifts for adults. A long time ago, my husband and I realized that there wasn't much that either of us wanted anymore in terms of material possessions. So instead of spending money on buying gifts for Christmas or birthdays or other holidays, we channel that money towards things like traveling experiences or having good meals together instead. And I think that if most people were to be honest with themselves, they would realize that they already have too much stuff to begin with. So they don't need more stuff piled on top of that. And you might be surprised if you have a conversation with your friends and family members and find out that they're feeling the exact same way you do. I've read a bunch of statistics that show that anywhere between 30 to 50% of gifts are unwanted and end up getting returned, regifted, or even tossed in landfills. And I know I was shocked when I read that. And it might also make you think about your gifting habits completely differently. And finally, the last frugal tip on this list is to shop secondhand whenever possible. And I'm not just talking about Goodwill or other thrift stores. I'm also talking about online resources you can use like eBay or Poshmark, which opens you up to a whole new world of opportunity to find exactly the thing you're looking for, for a fraction of the price. Things like furniture, home decor, clothing, books, sporting equipment, or kids, toys, and clothes. I've saved thousands of dollars over the years, simply by checking Facebook marketplace thrift stores or resale sites before buying new. Not only does secondhand shopping save money, but it also keeps perfectly good items out of landfills. And if you'd like to hear more tips and ideas on how to thrift shop or save money like a minimalist, be sure and go check out one of these videos that YouTube thinks that you like, or I'll see you next week until then. Take care. Bye-bye.