Living for Cheap: Discipline is Required

Is there really such a thing as living for cheap in today’s world economy? I know that here in America, unemployment rates are in the double-digits in many states, people are mostly up to their eyeballs in credit card and other consumer debt, not to mention being saddled with un-payable mortgages, rising healthcare costs, rising food costs, and gasoline costs that are going through the roof. A lot of people unfortunately have had to choose between whether they were going to buy groceries or have health insurance, and there’s something deeply wrong with that in my humble opinion. Of course, many of us are living in self-made messes, brought on by our own greed, selfishness, and hyper-consumerism, so it’s not like we can only blame external factors, but at the same time, we can’t act like those external factors are not there either.

But back to my question: How does one go about “living on the cheap”? Is it even possible in today’s economic climate? The good news is that there are TONS of resources to help you do just that on the Web. This is what I hope to do with this blog, is to give people a central location on the Web where they can find all the resources they need to live comfortably without having to break the bank to do it. A lot of what we go through financially is a result of our spending habits, and what I mean by that is the type of things we do with our money without even thinking about it. And our spending habits come from the general mindset that we developed over time, going all the way back to our childhood and how we saw our parents or other significant figures in our lives deal with money. I’m not trying to go all “release your inner child” on you, but it’s important to know what your general attitude is about money. Do you see it as something you use to grow more money with (i.e., investing), or do you see it as something you use to buy whatever you may have an impulse for at the time, with no thought of how that purchase may impact your overall financial picture? These are some of the questions and issues we’ll (hopefully) be tackling with this blog, if my attention span will allow me to do it.

But living for cheap really boils down to making quality decisions with your money. You can carry out living on a budget without making it feel like a form of torture, you just have to be wise about where and why you spend, and really take the time to think about what you’re doing with your money before you allow impulse spending to kick in. One thing you’ll learn as we go along with this blog is that frugal living is really just a state of mind, and one that requires that ugliest-of-all-ugly-words: DISCIPLINE. Yep, it’s really as simple as that. But we’ll talk more about some specifics on living for cheap in our coming posts.