Frugal Living :Another way to Invest
Being frugal is another form of investing. You are taking the money that you are saving and putting it somewhere where you feel is more justified. I live a somewhat frugal life. I save any & all change, throw it into my change bucket. I usually forget about it after 3 days. I think there are many definitions to what frugal is meant to interpret for the individual. I personally think frugality is taking money that I was thinking of spending at McDonalds and turning around, investing the funds into the stock market. Since my passion is investing my money in the stock market that means that I have to wade through the various stocks that are volatile & pick the trends that I see are doing well. I did a test a few months back after reading an article on MSN Personal finance, they were testing a about 4 families to see if they could stop spending money on things that weren’t necessary to their everyday life. I was impressed with one of the families that I set out and conducted my own test of my will & how I spent my money. I had it planned out that I would use the excess money & invest it into a long term investment.
My plan was to start the following week after payday. Well that Monday, I took money out of the ATM as my normal Monday habit. After I had taken it out, I remembered what I was trying to accomplish. I went into the bank and redeposit the money. I made a mental note to go grocery shopping that evening. I considered that a necessity. It was very difficult not to go to Star bucks, the different places that I love going to for lunch. I went to the grocery store, spent under a $100.00. I calculated what I would have spent had I gone out to eat & the Star bucks run. I was astonished at how much I would have spent. My lunch was running me anywhere from $4-9.50!!! I averaged it out that I was spending about $6.00 everyday for lunch and $4.00 for my morning coffee. That was 50 bucks a WEEK!! Well that went into my savings account. Well, y’all probably thought we had solved an issue huh? I remember after work, my best friend was like let’s go golfing, I was like heck yea! D’oh! I can’t, my money saving quest. I average going golfing at least twice a week. I ran the numbers, $60.00 a week for my golfing habit, wow. Into the savings, went $60.00. I was up to a $110.00. You think that’s bad huh? Well it got funnier, remember those groceries that I bought? I didn’t realize I had to cook the stuff. I wasn’t going out anytime soon. I swear this was going to be a looong month. I spend an average of $12.00 a dinner meal at least 4 times a week & the weekend was even more absurd. I averaged $64.00 that went to the restaurants. When I started coming back around, they asked me where the heck I had been, that was sad.
Well we are over the “I thought I needed that food necessity” Let’s move on to buying things that I thought were imperative to have such as that brand new Bose system in my truck. Maybe it was the drinking fest on the second Tuesday of the month with my college buddies. I have many extra curricular activities that were taking money out of the bank & feeding corporate America. I averaged that I spent at least $350 dollars a week on things such as going out, movies, toys and whatever else piqued my fancy. So that went into my savings, after calculating where the majority of my money went. I was already at roughly $1600 that I wasn’t really showing for anything. I make good money, I have money left over after paying my bills but the fact that there was nothing to show for the money exiting my account was a chilling reality to me.
That was the hardest month that I had really experienced in my adult financial life. When all was said & done, I invested the money into some very selective stocks. I also took a cold hard look at how I handled my finances. I am doing great now, I am saving a lot more money & I have something to show for the fruits of my labor.