Let’s banish guilt. Far too often, I turn myself in knots trying to quell my feelings of guilt over not doing something quickly enough or frugally enough or environmentally-friendly enough or creatively enough. Why do I torture myself? There’s always room for improvement in every endeavor in life–I know this–and guilt only serves to steal my time. Our society loves to tell us what we should be doing and how we should be living. Some of these...
It is 100% possible to live frugally anywhere. Of this, I’m convinced. I often hear folks bemoan our high cost-of-living city as thwarting frugal endeavors, to which I say preposterous! For all of our post-college years, Mr. Frugalwoods and I have lived in notoriously expensive locales: New York City, Washington, DC, and Cambridge, MA (twice). And we’ve still managed to adhere to–and enjoy–an extreme frugality regime. Lately, I’ve been pleasantly inundated with messages from fellow Boston-area frugal...
*well sorta, keep reading… So what’s a frugal weirdo to do when you want something that costs money, but you don’t want to pay for it? Get creative. I wanted to go to grad school. Since graduating from undergrad in ’06, I had this overwhelming desire (delusion?) to get my master’s degree. I like school and I figured it would be a wise move for my budding career. However, I had zero intentions of paying for said...
I’m willing to bet that your goal in life isn’t to move to a homestead on 20+ acres of wooded land in southern Vermont by the time you’re 33 (although if it is, email me since clearly we have a lot in common). But I’m also willing to bet that you have a higher purpose guiding your financial decisions beyond merely slogging through life as a mindless consumer. Mr. Frugalwoods and I haven’t always known that our ultimate...
Clothes! We’ve all gotta wear them, but we don’t have to spend a ton doing so. While I don’t think Mr. Frugalwoods or I have any clothes quite as ancient as our venerated 19-year-old Frugalwoods-mobile (whose virtues I extolled earlier this week), we certainly have some, ahem, mature threads. Since not consuming is a huge part of both our philosophy on lessening our environmental impact and also a key component in how we save 71%+ each year, we have...
Oh Frugalwoods-mobile the oft-mentioned, but rarely glamorized, work horse of the Frugalwoods family. Today, I dedicate a post to you. Fear not, this isn’t a eulogy for she’s not dead (yet), but rather this is a reflection of gratitude for the tremendous schlepping performed by this fossil of a vehicle. While certainly it would be thriftier to exist sans car, Mr. Frugalwoods and I consider Frugalwoods-mobile a luxurious element of our lives. It’s just plain easier to own...
Greeting fair Frugalwoods friends! It’s Mr. Frugalwoods here, making a rare appearance as author. I’m usually your trusty behind-the-scenes tech guy, but today I want to share our strategies for securing gratis TV. “Hold on, you don’t have cable?!?” Yep. Don’t have it. Never have and probably never will. We’re a cable TV executive’s worst nightmare. But fear not, fair tube viewer, Mrs. FW and I do watch TV. It’s just that it’s the free kind that’s...
One thing we hold dear here at ye olde Frugalwoods HQ (aka our house) is snacking. Indeed, snacks are hallowed whether we’re hiking, biking, lounging, plotting against the consumer industrial complex, or just generally annoying Frugal Hound with our presence. The pursuit of frugal snacks has led us to quest far and wide–from the aisles of our discount grocer (shout out to Market Basket) to the hallowed halls of Costco. My interest in snacks has elevated...
A note to new readers: while we often delve deeply into financial topics (such as How A Year Of Extreme Frugality Changed Us and Strategic Luxury: The Difference Between Frugality And Miserliness), we also like to keep it irreverent and downright silly. Because hey, who doesn’t need an investigative interview series conducted by a dog?! And so, I hope you’ll enjoy Frugal Hound Sniffs! If you’d prefer a more, ahem, financial independence-related post, start here. Greetings, Internet. It’s your...
Our lives here at Frugalwoods HQ are luxuriously frugal. For us, frugality isn’t about deprivation or hardship, it’s about spending money only on what truly matters. The point of our frugality isn’t merely to save as much money as possible, the point is to create lives we love living. There’s no martyrdom or pain in our lifestyle of extreme frugality and we never feel as though we’re missing out on the riches of life. The Luxuriously Frugal Life Mr....
