This is a guest post by Stevie Clapton. If you need help with your finances, this article will show you how living a frugal lifestyle can help you simplify your finances and life.
New times call to new models, and one of these models is being frugal.
When it comes to living a frugal lifestyle, it is all about balance, but while it can be easy to maintain a balanced well-being, it is often hard to manage a financial balance.
Prudent saving and spending is the key to keeping your finances and life simple and worry free, but to achieve this goal it is necessary to take a minute or two of self-introspection to find if what you are doing now contributes to living in frugality.
1. Understanding What A Frugal Life Means
As opposite of what the real terms means, many people think that living frugal is living in total dissipation and careless attitude about just anything, including finances.
Frugality really means restraining from extravagant expenditure and living habits, avoiding lavishness or waste of resources, trying to economize in the use of consumable resources, and being prudent with financial and economical aspects of one’s daily life.
2. Balance Your Finances Before Your Life
You cannot really go any farther when shifting to frugality if you do not balance your finances first.
A balanced lifestyle often starts with a balanced well-being, but when you are accruing debt and your finances seems to be out of control, it is hard to find an overall balance to go with.
Start by outlining a monthly budget and trim all the unnecessary expenses from it. Pay off your debt as soon as you can and, if necessary, consider the option to apply for a low interest loan to repay all your high interest debt, including credit cards and payday loans.
3. Suppress Indulgence and Instant Gratifications
One good way to keep your finances and life simple is to stop the habit of spending on those little rewards to indulge yourself. Avoid falling into the trap of instant gratification perks that credit cards offers to get you spending more money.
If you actually were able to save enough money on your last visit to the grocery store, applaud yourself for the achievement, but do not let that merchant rewards you with those little tricks that cost you more than what you can really save.
4. Turn Yourself Into a Balanced Money Saver
Knowing the importance that saving money has for a frugal lifestyle, many people make saving money their main goal in life, taking it to the limit of unbalanced well-being.
Despite saving and avoiding waste are both important for a frugal life, it is important to assimilate the real dimension of maintaining healthy finances, but also a healthy lifestyle.
5. Returning to the Basics
Because money balance is also important in frugality, the best way to keep your finances and life simple is returning to the basics. This means returning to using cash instead of credit cards, and avoid as much as possible any financial instrument that accrues debt.
Ultimately, if you have to make use of a checkbook or a debit or credit card, make sure to jot down all your expenditures, so you can plan and balance your expenses with ease.
What are you doing to keep your finances and life simple?
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Author BIO
Stevie Clapton is passionate about providing advisable financial and frugal based content to all over the financial blogging community.
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The simplest and most effective financial advice I have ever seen, which this article points out several of the same tips, is through Finiacial Peace University. You can see the “7 baby steps” on http://www.daveramsey.com Its simple, easy, and effective.
Thanks for sharing this Sandy. Dave Ramsey is one of the best.
Thanks for the great reminders. It is so important for us all to realize that spending money is usually just a bad habit that carries a heavy cost. By practicing a good financial balance you not only avoid spending money you don’t have–you learn to appreciate what you do have on so many levels….I call it “right-sizing” your finances but I agree with every one of your points. Here were a few more ideas of my own…. http://smartliving365.com/rightsizing-your-finances-a-smart-way-to-manage-money/
Thanks a lot Kathy for sharing this great article. May be you can write a guest post for the Midway Simplicity community. I’m sure we’re going to love your wisdom.
I second Sandy’s recommendation of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. I think it should be a required course for every young person and for every older person who hasn’t already taken the course. I recommended FPU to a friend recently. She took my suggestion and just this week, she thanked me for telling her about FPU. It’s already making a difference in her financial life!
Interesting! What was the biggest result you could achieve by following Dave’s advice?
The third one is very true. It can be quite hard to resist the temptation of spending on little rewards for ourselves, especially when it’s cheap. In order to avoid doing that, whenever I go out to buy essentials, I only bring the money I need. That way, you avoid spending extra for your rewards, and you can stick to your budget.
That’s a very good tip Jorge. “Only bring the money you need”. I’ve tried it several times before and it definitely help avoid extra purchases, that you wouldn’t resist buying if you have more money.