Exploring Extreme Frugality
I’m inspired by @revisesociology and his incredibly detailed, visually interesting posts about his quest for early retirement.
Up until now I have largely resisted the message of the extreme frugality movement. It felt like too much worrying about small stuff. Nobody wants to stress about buying coffee.
Concerns About Extreme Frugality
At first it felt like “extreme frugality” was self-defeating.
After all - If I do the right things for my body, such as buy a coffee and sit at the coffeeshop working on my laptop for four hours, I make way more than I spend. If I work one extra hour at $20/hr because the coffeeshop vibe keeps me feeling a little happier than at home, that $4 americano is a valid business expense.
But, of course, this is a huge strawman. Nobody would argue with my previous example. Or if they did (“you could make coffee at home and walk to the park!” - fuck no) — I could ignore them.
Just because I find a few edge cases where extreme frugality mindsets can break down, does not mean the core idea isn’t right.
In fact, based on first principles thinking, “extreme” frugality is just basic common sense. Obviously if you have the self-control to do so you would choose to retire years earlier rather than have expensive coffee each day. Obviously if taking two days less vacation per year in your 20’s == having years of travel paid for by the cumulative interest for your golden years, that might be an awesome trade.
It’s all obvious. The only problem is that it’s hard.
Not Everyone Cares... But I Do
Some people just don’t care. They want to cruise at low altitude, keeping it balanced with a job, a family, and a community in a suburban environment somewhere. I 100% support it. But for people like me, who see life as a quest to achieve increasingly exciting and useful things, extreme frugality is the correct intuition.
I lack that intuition. For me, it’s too easy to think that I’m hungry right now and I’ll just go spend $13 on the healthy salad with a lot of protein… instead of the $3 breakfast sandwich. Or the $0.50 rice and beans at my house.
There’s a balance for sure. Honestly though if eating rice and beans 80% of the time for a few months is the forcing function that enables some faster debt payments and starts the upward spiral, that’s not exactly legendary stoicism. That’s easy.
I’m not trapped in a POW camp for 5.5 years like John McCain, or in jail for 27 years like Nelson Mandela. I’m just in my house eating rice and beans with hot sauce.
Goals
Consider me intrigued. There’s a lot to do. My goal is to set up a stable foundation to at least measure my progress. In the past, I’ve used some charts and graphs but its all been a mess and any personal financial “system” collapses pretty quickly.
We’ll see if I can do better this time. I have to. It’s the absolute most important variable I can improve in my life right now, the “10x” factor if you will.
I will share my findings if anything good comes of all this. I hope I can turn this into yet another revamp of my “Personal Finance Quest” series, where I try to pay off all my debts and reach net worth $0… I just have to actually start making progress so every post isn’t about me failing.
Do you have resources for extreme frugality stuff? I know of a few blogs, Mr. Money Mustache and Early Retirement Extreme, so throw anything else you got at me in the comments.
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I used to follow Wranglerstar on YouTube. Well, I still do but I don't spend any time on YouTube anymore. Anyway, he made a video a few years ago and it sort of stuck with me. He also doesn't exactly say it in the video, either. What I got from it, was that you need to have a goal to work towards. Getting out of debt is usually one of the first steps in achieving that goal in almost all circumstances. Getting out of debt just for the sake of doing it just might not be a big enough motivator and that's why it's so easy to fall back when you're confronted with a choice to spend or not. What's your goal after you get out of debt? That should be your motivator.
Yeah it's a pretty good motivator. In my case I have some pretty specific goals, it's a nice thing to have but I think the hard part is more the community aspect. My friends are still spending money the way they used to so it's more about learning to avoid all that and find new patterns
Yeah, the social aspect is a tricky part. I suspect the people selling the debt know this and use it to their advantage. The hardest part for me is around times when I'm expected to spend money like xmas or birthdays. I have enough willpower to fight it, for the most part, but it's extremely hard to do and I see why most can't control it when everyone else is expecting you to give in.
You do not need to eat horrible food just because you are poor. This is a fallacy I found out about when I lost "half my size" with natural methods a few years ago. I stopped eating out and started eating organic at home.
My new food became immediately healthier, better tasting, and cost about 25% of what I used to spend on food. I was not trying to save money food at the time - I was trying to lose 130 pounds, which I did. I was shocked at how cheap my delicious food became.
The only "downside" to this way of eating is that the effort to find, store, and prepare food goes way up. In my case, the health benefit, lower cost, and taste make it worth the effort. I have a post on my wordpress blog about how to find and take care of healthy food. That was that hardest part for me when I was in the US since that vast majority of the food there is so toxic.
How I Make Sure to Have Healthy Food Available to Eat
I also have all kinds of videos on my you tube channel about how to eat well and take care of your food. Here is one of my playlists about that:
Healthy food I eat now that I am thin
My son @bxlphabet posts about healthy food here on steemit. He grew up with the crap I used to offer and no one was happier than him when I changed during his teen years. He has lots of links and information about this way to eat on his blog. This is a recent post with all of his links to various ideas for eating healthy.
Soaking Quinoa Before Cooking
My son is on food stamps in California and I live in poverty in Thailand. If the two of us can be happy and healthy on cheap food - anyone can.
Thanks for all the advice @fitinfun I do agree that it's important to keep this idea in mind... healthy can be affordable. I was making this mistake in a big way up until a few weeks ago, when I switched to a lot more rice and beans with veggies and other simple / healthy foods.
Will take a look at those links, I could use some new recipes, cheers :-)
Simple is better. I had a fitness trainer near the end of my weight loss who set me straight on that. Just chip away at it :)
Have you considered matched betting. Not sure how it would work with US betting laws but basically in the UK, bookies offer bonuses to bet with them. You can easily take advantage of these bonuses, risk free and make a fair bit. Possibly something to consider if it’s viable in the US.
It's not a good way to build a long-term sustainable pillar of income to be honest.
I’m not so sure. I was making approx $7000 a year for several years when I was doing it and it only took a couple of hours a week. Even if it only last for a couple of years, it gives enough to invest in crypto etc or to clear debts. I stopped a couple of years ago but I don’t think it’s much different now.