When I moved out, I did alright out of necessity (poor college student) until my husband and I started living together. I sort of got used to him spoiling me, and we both felt too tired and busy to try to eat at home (and our cooking knowledge was as our small apartment “kitchen”). Combined with college expenses for us both, a period of unemployment, and some other unexpected expenses, we got ourselves pretty deep in debt.

We’re still working on climbing out of our hole, but we finally turned things around. We had tried just simple “not shopping” but that didn’t work. Finally, I started researching frugality the way I researched other interests in the past. And my husband has been very cooperative when I suggested making changes.

Sure, there are some things I might do differently when we have more money, but mostly I think I’d buy higher quality items that I can’t afford right now and fix up our house more.

Most of the things we do revolve around not wasting stuff and I don’t see any reason why having more money means we should start wasting what we have and trashing the environment. And sometimes it does turn into a game, like seeing how we can improve our financial numbers from week to week, or see how little garbage we can produce.

Plus, a lot of other things we’ve started doing are just fun. For example, I have a lot of new cheap/free hobbies like birdwatching, learning about (and eating) edible wild foods, gardening, caring for our chickens, taking walks with my husband, cooking, reading books from the library, etc.

Certainly, when we’re out of debt we will be able to breathe a little more easily and I will loosen the financial reins a bit. We will have a larger spending allowance, etc.

But I was raised to be frugal and so it’s a way of life. Plus, being raised frugally means you start to see it as something of a game. See how much you can save.

Right now, though, the game is: See how much we can pay down on disability and unemployment. We’re doing pretty well, so far: about $1500 on his student loans while still keeping up credit card payments.

Eric: Eric, my plan is to grow wealth too, so I can have employment options later on. If I can grow the money I invest, then I may not have to rely on “working for the man” when I would prefer to be spending time with family.

Mr. ToughMoneyLove: Very good insight. For myself, I think my motivating factors include a little bit of all of those. I want to become financially independent so I can spend my time doing the things I want to do – not structuring my life around an employer’s schedule. I am also motivated by the environment because I hate wasting resources – be them financial, natural, or other. I guess I have these ideas entrenched in my mind, and approached this article from that angle.

deepali:

Momma: I’ve been there, and there is nothing wrong with that. In some ways growing up without a lot of extras was a blessing because I learned frugality at an early age. When I started out on my own I continued living frugally, and continue to this day. Sound financial principles will take you much further than throwing more money at the problem (although more money certainly doesn’t hurt!).