In the previous post, When There is Not Enough Time to Be Frugal I started discussing my thoughts about the dilemma concerning saving money when you don’t have the time to put frugal practices into place. My personal opinion is that some frugality is better than none and choosing how to incorporate it into your lifestyle is key.
Now I will continue with my remaining two thoughts.
The second thought is that it is usually better (for a family, not necessarily the economy) to save money rather than earn it. Money that is being saved isn’t usually taxed as income. So in essence, you get to keep all of the money that you “earn” by saving. If you purchase bag of children’s clothes or toys at a yard sale, you might save $50. If you earned $50 at a job, 40 percent of it might be claimed (depending on your tax bracket), so you actually only earned $30. I won’t get into social security and all of that here right now. If you add up all of the money that you have saved by being frugal, you might be surprised to see that it generates a nice little income. As I said, this doesn’t necessarily stimulate the economy, but it can certainly prevent disaster in your family from living beyond your means.
The third thought is that many money saving activities can be multitasked, so that you are not spending any extra time on them. For example, if you repair a shirt while watching evening television (assuming that you would be watching television anyway), then you saved the cost of a new shirt without using up any extra time. You can cut coupons while waiting at a doctor’s office, create a meal list while waiting in line, research purchases while on the telephone, etc. The key is to anticipate those moments when you might be able to fit a frugal activity in during something else that you have to do.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here or subscribe to the blog using the subscription box on the right.
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