While I now live in a semi-rural part of Pennsylvania, the fact is that I am a city girl born and bread, uh bred. Many people think that is harder to be frugal in the city. They claim:
In the city you can’t grow your own vegetables or can food.
In the city the cost of living in higher.
There is often no space to store stockpiled food or other items.
You can’t hang laundry in the city.
While those reasons may all be valid, there are many work around ideas to address them. For example, my mother hung every item of clothing (including underwear to my teenage embarrassment) on a clothesline that ran across the courtyard from our kitchen window to a neighbor’s kitchen window.
But I don’t want to focus on the workarounds just now. Instead, here are some of the advantages of living in the city when it comes to being frugal.
There are generally a lot of shopping choices. Instead of one or two supermarkets, there are hundreds to chose among for the best prices.
There are a lot of inexpensive housing options. While it is true that housing can be expensive, there are plenty of opportunities for sharing housing, living in different neighborhoods, etc.
There is cheap transportation available. Forget the expense of buying a car, maintaining a car, buying insurance and paying for gas when you can go anywhere in the city by train, bus, cab, car service, biking or foot power.
There is a lot of great curb shopping to be done. I never usually get the opportunity to curb shop here, but in the city, it is often encouraged. You can often furnish an entire apartment with items that other people discard on the sidewalk. Trash pick up can often be expensive and inconvenient, so many people leave stuff out and hope it will be taken to a new home.
Click here for more articles by Mary Ann Romans.
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