Do you consider yourself living frugally? What choices you make to remain frugal? Why do you do it?

I'm more of a mixed bag.  I'll agonize over which can of corn is the best value in the grocery store but think nothing of dropping a ton of money on something just because I want it.  Fortunately I usually manage to remain within what I can realistically afford, but it makes no sense.

I am the same way. I hate spending on groceries, but if I see a deal in a flyer I gotta hav eit.
Heather

i consider myself to be frugal.  i do buy want we want/need, but i always strive to do it in a frugal manner.

I thought I was living frugally...until I looked at our Visa bill!  (egads!)  

I try to look through flyer's and and cut coupons (which, for me,  are few and far between)  We try and get the best deal on what we need.  We recently bought a new T.V. and my husband went from store to store and through flyer to flyer to find the best deals.  It's not easy.  As for grocery shopping,  I go to Costco,  and buy bulk toilet paper and such,  except with me,  I can't seem to go into that store and not end up spending a $100.00 more than I bargained for...I try,  I really do try and get what's JUST on my list,  but it just sucks me in and I fall for it everytime!!!

For us when it comes to groceries we are at the point where we have such a huge stockpile that all we need to buy are the loss leaders except of course for eggs,milk etc...As an example when turkeys go onsale here usually around Thanksgiving I will pick up 3 min. This gives us our turkey for Thanksgiving,Christmas and Easter....I sometimes will pick up a fourth Turkey to cook up around June to have in salads, sandwhiches, a quick meal etc in the hot summer months opposed to having my oven turned on

  We buy our furniture second hand but we make sure it is of really good quality so that it will last for years. We do however buy our appliance new along with any electronics.

   We live below our means so that we can plan for our future,help our families when the need arises ,be prepared for any emergency and not have to live from pay to pay.

    We started living frugally about 4 years ago because we had no choice at the time......this opened up a whole new life for Dh and myself.We started with $0 equity over this time and living from paycheck to paycheck to now having approximatly $85,000 equity between our home , rrsps, emergency fund etc. I know that house prices have jumped big time over the last 4 years but we also have put over the last 3 years about $30,000 cash in renovations.....I am really excited to look back each year to see how far we have come.

  We didn't have too difficult of a time adjusting in the beginning as we knew what we had to do with cutting back etc. The biggest impact however has been over the last 21 months now I guess it has been where we have acheived much....well to us
    

I think we fall in this category. Hubby and I learned a lot form a reality show we are on. Some of you maybe familiar with this show. It's called till debt do us part. Gail the financial adviser helped us build a weekly budget and we use money jars. So we stick to a budget. The deal is to goet to the end of the week before we get tot he end of the money.

Til Debt Do Us Part is such a cool show and much more helpful than the show Maxed Out. My husband and I are trying hard to get rid of our debt. I do not think we are frugal as much as we are budget restricted if that makes sense. I use coupons as often as I can. We cancelled our tv and we do not have a car but we have the internet and cell phones. We eat out but not at expensive places but probally too often. One thing I find difficult is socializing. Friends do not understand we do not have as much money to spend and cannot afford to spend without budgeting but they have no problem coming to our house and eating our food. We suggested pot luck on several occassions and all of them brought pop or chips. Arghhhhh! We are not at the point yet where we are saving and I really hope we reach that point soon it is frustrating.

This post was last modified: 19-12-2006 11:21 PM by snoringcat.

I think we are pretty frugal.
-We have a great stockpile so all we ever buy is produce, dairy and loss leaders.
-We keep our credit cards in a bag of water in the freezer to prevent impulse buys.
-Our entertainment budget is $20/mth for 7 of us. We have 2 movie nights and then we play games or go to the library.
-We bought a vehicle in December after not having one for 4 years. Once it warms up we will be walking most of the time.
-We buy all of our clothes from second hand stores or garage sales.(except undies)
-We keep our thermostat at 63 in the winter and 71 in the summer.
-We are working on hang drying our clothes.

One thing we do that I don't see mentioned yet:  I bake virtually all of our bread.  I did let bread-baking fall by the wayside a little in December, when Christmas Baking Frenzy was underway.

We live in Toronto, and I find I can bake *good* whole wheat bread for about a third of the cost (per loaf) of the cheapest on-sale loaf of processed whole wheat bread we can usually find.  It might be less than that if we went to the effort of weighing the homemade loaves - I imagine they're heavier than the "Dempster's" or "Equality" loaves.

It's simpler and less time-consuming than many realize, too - once you learn/get accustomed to it, you should be able to turn out bread for a labor "cost" of about 15 min. a loaf - or less.

I'm working on learning to do reasonable baked tortillas (we try to avoid fried food, and most tortilla recipes are fried...) and bagels!  

~Sara