Frugal Living - Budgetin Strategies

Budgeting always sounds a bit odd, like it's only done to bug someone, or like companies doing it in times of tension. Shifting the point of view budgeting is vital for everyone. First you need to know what you earn, so that you can truly enjoy spending that what's remaining ;).
The basic steps are easy:

1. know your income (list everything that brings in money e.g. salary, aid money from the government (Kindergeld, Harz 4), pension, income from shares and bonds, etc.)
2. check what has to be paid regularly (rent, car, food, etc.)
3. calculate a rate of money to be saved for urgencies, holidays, that ugly final car holdback, annual payments etc. Make sure to put that money far away because although it's not used now you need to spend it sooner or later. I consider it as spend and put it on a short term saving bank account. By doing so I don't have to take care of an imaginary line on my usual bank account but I know people who are doing so.
4. take off point two and three from point one and you have the amount of money you can spend freely

If you get a negative number you are in trouble because that means that you are spending more than you earn each month. If you don't want to end up being filmed by RTL for their reality show "Raus aus den Schulden" ("Get out of the debt") you need to check point two and three more carefully.

Maybe you can cut back on hobbies,  your car, clothing or luxury goods.

I'll keep this one short because there are well written websites and tools that help you get in contact with the principles of budgeting:

1. About.com Frugal Budgeting a description on how to set up and maintain a budget
2. WikiHow How to Budget a description including an example
3. Better Budgeting free budget forms for the ones who want to do it on paper
4. Dough Roller 75 Painless Money Saving Tips a more or less serious list of tips
5. Dough Roller 10 Online Budgeting Tools  here you find  a list of budgeting tools, some are free others aren't. Thus take care that you don't invest in something you don't need. I used to use a budgeting system but I could never convince myself that my data is save in such a system. As a result I played with the system and found it helpful but I never entered my real financial data and kept it running. If you consider to use a program be careful because financial data is nothing to be light-hearted about.

You can find tons of articles about budgeting just use google ;). You don't need to track every little amount you spend unless you have financial difficulties at the moment or you are planning to buy something really expensive. The whole budgeting issue should not be pure pain, it should open a way to see your situation from another perspective. If you track all the money you spent in a month you will be surprised which areas cost the most.

Frugal Living - Americas Cheapest Family

Do you know about the mirroring principle? It's used in different motivation techniques. If you want to achieve something, you have to find a role model and copy the aspects you want to get better in. Or in other words basically learn from the best :).

Who would be someone to learn frugality from? It's definitively not me, but maybe the already often quoted cheapest family of America is a good example. The (used to) live on barely 26000 € a year. I guess they are earning more money now because they sold their story to the media and they wrote a book about frugality. Back in 2007 they were living on 26000 € and they were 7 people.
Let's do the math 26k is the annual income which is ca. 2166€ per month, or 309€ per month per person.

Could you live on such a basis? Please keep in mind it's not pocket money it's everything you have!

The answer is probably a no and if you live in Germany you would be better of to use our social system and collect Harz 4 (a basic income for everyone who has not worked for a specific time, there are no preconditions you just need to fill out a form, if you don't have anything you will receive the money).

Just for you to compare the monthly income of an adult living on Harz 4 receives 359€ but the flat and other costs are paid from the system as well such as: the flat's rent, heating, and other costs if your argumentation is good. In addition to that, you are allowed to earn 100€ per month without risking to loose the Harz 4 money.
The conclusion of this example is that Harz 4 equips you with more money than this family had.

So how do they do it?
Based on their website they:

• budget their income in advance
• only buy things when they can afford them
• do not use credit cards at all
• spent ca. 259€ (350$) for food
• go grocery shopping once a month
• buy only used cars
• buy clothes at a thrift store

The key seems to be proper planning and a lot of discipline to keep going. They really inspired me. Maybe it's as usually not the what that matters but the how. It's amazing how little they spent for food but I would be afraid that the meals do not contain a lot of fresh vegetables in winter if they really shop only once a month. If they do, my imagination is just not bright enough.

If you want to know more about how they are dealing with life and money, visit their website. They also answer questions in a blog. They are not frequent bloggers and they don't answer their request forms but maybe the site (if it works) will inspire you.

Frugal Living and the American Dream

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Victor Frankl

This quote seems to be true in many cases. Especially when you take a closer look at our economic situation. Somehow, I don't know how or when, the general lifestyle in the US seems to change. Last year I heard of people staring to swap cloth and re- or up-cycle things. In my opinion, the fascinating aspect of this is not that there are people doing so, they probably did so for a long time, but that it's kind of en Vogue. The media reported about it, even here in Europe. From European perspective it was like "oh my god" what happened to them?
To be honest I guess some people have to cut back and maybe the attitude changes a little bit but great changes need more than just some weeks and an event which was shocking but buffered by the government.
The upside of all this is that living frugally is a topic which is discussed publicly and isn't considered to be odd or a stigma.

I prepared a small series of post because I was fascinated of the topic and I wanted to learn more, understand better, and of course think about my own attitude (as usually).


Before we had into the topic a brief explanation what living frugally means is necessary. Thanks to Wikipedia it's an easy task:
Frugality is the practice of acquiring gods and services in a restrained manner, and it's the practice of resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services to achieve a longer term goal.
As far as I figured out the long term goal often is getting out of a debt or to save some money for the future.
The aspect to acquire gods and services in a restrained manner is probably the bigger challenge then the second one. A part of our recognition is based on the fact what we can afford thus buying is deeply linked into our behavioral patterns. The question here is wether we build up our self esteem based on the stuff we own or on other aspects.
For those who need status symbols it might be difficult to cut back spendings.


The second aspect is basically to use up the stuff we own in an efficient manner. This part is easier if you are creative but being creative is a question of practice. If you aren't creative right now or if you are searching for inspiration you will find thousand ideas on different websites.


When I came across the topic for the first time it started thinking:

• Is there something I'm spending to much on?  Yes
• Can I cut back spending money in some areas without lowering my standard of living? Yes
• Do I want to cut the edges? For some the answer is yes, for others it's a no.
• Do I own stuff which could be used better?  Yes
• Do I want to focus on using the stuff better?  Hmm, yes and no

Start to question yourself! If one of the questions is answered with a yes the following post might be interesting for you.


In the next post we will learn from the pro's. So if you think managing a family of seven is not possible with an average income of barley 26000 € per year, you will be surprised.