Living stingy is NOT living cheap. Living stingy is saving money instead of wasting money on products that we don’t need in our lives. It also isn’t the frugality disease mindset that many in the financial independence journey are trapped with.
The best guide to living stingy is to lower our 3 most expensive line items in our budget. Food, transportation, and housing. There’s no point in figuring out how to save 10 cents at the grocery store by peeling the banana peel and weighing it with the lowered weight.
That’s not a good return on investment on our time. I personally save as much money as possible and live on $1,250 per month in the United States, a highly developed country. That’s unheard of. I get special joy out of saving money and not wasting money on useless products and services I don’t use.
All of my essential expenses gets paid and I don’t feel like I’m depriving my life of anything. That’s what living stingy is all about. People on the outside think you are being cheap but in reality, you are being frugal. As long as you don’t feel like you are depriving yourself of anything, it’s not bad to save money.
Living stingy means sometimes letting go of some of the luxury items that many are accustomed to for their standard of living. There’s no need to go to Capital Grille for an $80 steak that’s going to leave you hungry afterwards.
A home cooked meal is not only healthier but you’ll enjoy it even more.
Living Stingy: 9 Ways to Save More Money
Below are the 9 ways living stingy can help you to save more money.
1) Get a Roommate
This is how I keep my housing costs so low. I currently pay $1,400/month all in, including utilities, internet, and rent. Split between me and my roommate, we only pay $700 per month, each. In the capital city of Texas, which is Austin. That’s unheard of!
Many think expensive cities mean paying exorbitant prices. That’s not true. There’s always a way to cut down on costs and one of the ways is to get a roommate. There’s always hidden gems in every city and it just takes a little bit of looking around to find the best deals.
I keep my housing costs as low as possible and getting a roommate is a great way to practice living stingy. When we’re young, we don’t need the luxury of a large space all to our selves. We don’t even have enough stuff to decorate our apartments in, anyway.
The average rent in America is around $2k/mo. If we can slash that in half, that’s an additional $1k/month we can put to work in our investments.
2) Living Stingy? Use Discounted Gift Cards
There’s no use in paying full price. I never pay full price on anything I buy because I buy discounted gift cards and pay for products and services that way. When I go to Supercuts, I use gift cards that came with a 20% off special during the Christmas season.
When I buy Domino’s I use their coupons and pay with 25% discounted gift cards I buy from Costco. Businesses love selling gift cards because they get an interest free loan. Therefore, they are willing to sell them at a discount. Some customers never even use their gift cards anyway.
Living stingy means never paying full retail price. Even using the credit cards to get 1 – 5% cash back rebate on our purchases is a way to never pay full retail price. Everyone else can pay the full price but not the ones who live frugally.
I save an additional $1k – $5k/year using this strategy. Which can pay for 1 – 7 months worth of rent. Worth it.
3) Use Credit Cards
By definition, using credit cards mean that you are not paying full price. The 1 – 5% rebates we earn from our credit cards are worth it. In some months, my credit card offers me a great 10% rebate if I spend on a certain category. How great is that!
It may be counterintuitive but using credit cards is a great way to live stingy. As long as we use our credit cards to spend money on products and services we were going to buy anyway, we win in the long run! Living stingy means finding any rebates here and there.
Not only do we get cash back, we build our credit at the same time as well. Whether we like it or not, our creditworthiness is important in determining what kind of loans we can get and the rates when we apply for mortgages. With mortgage rates increasing to above 7% in 2023, getting a great rate is a big deal.
As long as we pay off the full credit card balance every month, everybody wins.
4) Consistently Eat at One Restaurant
Many companies, especially restaurant chains, offer loyalty rewards programs for their loyal customers. Chipotle, Subway, Dominos and the like give free food to their most loyal customers. I’m a part of the Chipotle, Subway, and Domino’s rewards club.
I give so much business to the companies that they reward me with free food once a month. It equates to about a 4 – 10% cash back on top of the cash back that I earn through my credit cards. Living stingy means not varying your food and eating at the same restaurant for an extended period of time.
I don’t just eat at one restaurant because it saves me money but for health reasons as well. My body has a hard time digesting foods and only Chipotle, Subway, and Domino’s makes foods that agree with my stomach and intestines. Not only do I save money but it’s better for my health as well.
A win-win situation. Making a decision on where to eat is a big task in and of itself. It gets easier when we eat the same things over and over again.
5) Use Online Codes
When I bought a $140 tennis shoe in March 2023, I went out of my way to google if there were any coupon codes. It took 2 seconds to Google just before I made the purchase. There was a 20% off coupon code, which I happily took advantage of.
That’s $28 worth of savings just because I googled at the last second before I made the purchase. Before you make a purchase for anything online, a simple 2 second Google Search does wonders in giving you more money from the transaction.
Living stingy means doing the easy things like looking up coupon codes. One of my regrets is not looking up coupon codes to open my Roth IRA with Fidelity. They had a $100 bonus for new customers who signed up. That’s an easy $100 that I missed out on.
It’s not much but it adds up over our lifetime. We never want to pay full retail price for any product or service..
6) Living Stingy: Buy Bulk
Wholesale clubs such as Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJs provide immense savings that we don’t even know. I used to only shop at my local grocery store until I got a Costco membership. Not only do I get to fill up my car at a cheaper rate than other gas stations, the products I buy save me money over the long term.
I bought 5 Colgate toothpastes for just $11, all in. Costco was already selling them for cheap but they had additional sales on top that allowed me to buy those toothpastes at that price. Wholesale clubs are well worth the $60 fee because we’re going to spend money on essential items anyway.
Things like bottled water, napkins, toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrush, detergent, and so much more. It’s the same products but at a cheaper price. Living stingy means finding out ways to save money. I bought my brand new 2022 MacBook Pro from Costco because they had a sale.
While they normally sell for $1,400, I bought from Costco for $900. That’s winning.
7) Buy Generic Goods
Especially when it comes to drugs. Most drugs are made by the same manufacturer but one gets slapped with a premium brand label while another has the generic logo on it for cheaper. It’s the exact same product but with different prices.
We shouldn’t have to pay more money for their brand name. We’re paying more money just so they have the power to sell to more customers at an expensive price. That’s not right. Living stingy means buying the exact same goods with the exact same quality but just at a lower price.
I used to buy Ozarka bottled water, but not anymore. Costco’s Kirkland branded water does the exact same thing as Ozarka. I also don’t buy Bounty products, but rather the generic Kirkland branded products. Branded products cost more money because of the packaging and the namesake.
Which adds no utility to us as consumers but rather it just benefits the company, overall. We shouldn’t have to pay more for their benefit.
8) Under-Estimate Your Needs
No matter what, we think we need more things than what we actually need. There’s not a lot of needs we have to make us happy. There’s no need to rent a $2k/mo high rise apartment in the middle of downtown just because the view is nicer.
A nicer view is not our needs. It’s a want. I personally live on $1.25k/mo because there isn’t a lot of things I need in my life to be happy. After food, housing, transportation, and insurance, there isn’t anything else that I need in my life. In fact, I actively throw away stuff I don’t need to declutter my life.
Living stingy doesn’t mean depriving yourself of basic needs. However, it does mean accurately estimating what your needs are. We need a lot less than we think to live and be happy. If I can do it living on $1.25k/mo in the capital city of Texas, anyone else can as well.
The best things in life are free. It’s not as expensive to fulfill our needs as the media makes it out to be.
9) Buy Quality
It’s better to measure twice and cut once. It’s better to buy a quality product once than mediocre products multiple times. There’s no point in buying a $5k car with an accident history with 100k+ miles. It’s better to spend $10k on a car with no accident history with 75k miles with a good maintenance history.
Quality products are worth it. Cheaper products are cheap for a reason. I usually never shop at Walmart anymore nor do I shop at dollar stores. It’s just not worth the money we dish out to them. Living stingy isn’t about saving the most amount of money possible.
It’s about efficiently allocating capital so that the overall cost that goes beyond money gets taken into account. Maybe the cheaper $5k car will be cheaper overall throughout the life of the car. However, the time it takes to go to a mechanic to fix issues that pop up throughout its life is costly.
Cost goes beyond money. And buying quality products lets you pay the minimum in hidden costs.
Living Stingy: My Story
I love living stingy. After I graduated college, I didn’t go out to bars and buy the most amount of alcohol. I didn’t eat out to expensive dinners every weekend. Although my income increased, my lifestyle didn’t increase. I didn’t spend more money just because my income increased.
That’s how to go from broke to rish. It’s not a bad idea to live stingy today so we can live like kings and queens tomorrow. I lived in a run-down apartment for $640/mo in Birmingham Alabama. When I moved to Houston, Texas, I lived in another run-down apartment for $750/mo.
Even as I’m in Austin, TX, I live for $700/mo. My income increased every single year in the past 7 years. However, I still refuse to partake in lifestyle creep. I love living stingy because there’s not a lot of needs and wants in my life. It’s how I amassed a fortune of $500k at just 28 years old.
I have much more plans to grow that into larger amounts and I’m excited to see what the future holds. Living stingy protects you from the inevitable future bad economic events that will happen in our lifetimes. When our spending is so low, layoffs won’t matter as much.
With a $500k net worth, I can safely withdraw $20k/year in spending from my investments. This is on top of my high paying 9-5 income. The ones who made fun of me for saving so much money are still struggling to build wealth and they’re barely starting their lives in their 30s.
It doesn’t feel good to spend as much money as possible. We need money for safety and security in our lives.
Living Stingy is Better than Living Large
Deep down, every consumerist American wants to live large. They want the lambos and the 5-star hotels without thinking it’ll financially hurt them. That’s excessive consumerism. There’s just no need to live in a 5,000 sq. ft. mansion driving a $250k car.
It looks glamorous, but when you actually live the lifestyle, it doesn’t make you feel as glamorous as watching from the outside looking in. There’s no need for a consumerist lifestyle because our needs are not as expensive as we think they are.
Living stingy is one of the best ways to live because it simplifies our life. With expensive purchases comes maintenance and the upkeep. There are people who sell their boats because they can’t keep up with the maintenance expenses and the taxes.
Many property owners in 2023 were selling their homes at a loss because they couldn’t afford the higher taxes the government imposed on them. It means they bought more house than they could afford. Living stingy is a far better way to live because there’s less stress.
I can easily make $1.25k/mo that supports my life. Even a $15/hr job could easily take care of my needs. Living stingy is a great way to avoid the lifestyle trap many fall into. When we own too much stuff, our stuff owns us. We don’t own our stuff.
THe freedom and flexilbity with not spending a lot of money is amazing.
Living Stingy: 9 Ways to Save More Money Shortlist
- Get a roommate
- Living stingy? Use discounted gift cards
- Use credit cards
- Consistently eat at one restaurant
- Use online codes
- Living stingy: buy bulk
- Buy generic goods
- Under-estimate your needs
- Buy quality
