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Living a more frugal life isn’t always about being stingy. It’s about being smarter with your money and making day to day choices that let your dollar go further.

These frugal living tips can help you to get out of debt, quit your job or travel the world. All things I’m sure every one of you has dreamed of from time to time.

Here are our favorite 18 frugal living tips that will really make an impact on your budget.

Stretch the Food Budget

One of the most shocking realizations we had once we finally started setting a monthly budget and tracking our spending was just how much we were spending on food.

We personally use Personal Capital to monitor our spending and it has been a game-changer.

In the past, there were months where our food budget was easily $50/day for just the two of us. We have since trimmed that number significantly while adding two additional kids to the mix.

For a lot of people, this is the easiest place to make a significant change in their spending habits.

Learn to Cook

Embrace the kitchen.

YouTube is one of life’s great gifts when it comes to learning how to cook. Search a dish that you typically crave when you choose to go out to eat.

Watch a couple of different cooking videos on YouTube and try your hand at making it yourself.

You might be surprised by just how easy it is to start making delicious food at home. Even if your prior cooking experience didn’t go beyond the microwave.

Meal Prep

Once you are comfortable in the kitchen this is the next logical step to take your food savings to the next level.

We love to meal prep and devote a portion of every weekend to doing so.

Doing so saves us money by:

Being strategic with our shopping by planning out meals with complementary ingredients

Reduces the chance we’ll go out to eat on a whim because we don’t have food at home

Ensures we have lunches premade for the week

Make Coffee at Home

Our friend Natalie over at Family Makes Sense just wrote a post about spending by Millenials at coffee shops. Did you know that the average Millenial spends over $2,000 a year at coffee shop??

Now I’ll fully admit that I’m a huge coffee snob. I love a good cup of micro-roasted coffee with hints of tropical fruits so I’m not going to be giving that up any time soon.

In an effort to save money, every morning I brew up enough for a cup and, while I was still working a 9-5 job, to fill up the thermos. A 12oz bag of beans may be a bit more expensive than the generic store brand but they will last me a few weeks which works out to less than $1/day.

Compare that to the cost of a daily coffee shop drink and you’ll spend less in a week than you would spend in a day or two at the coffee shop.

Go Vegetarian

Not necessarily full time. I’m not one to easily give up my smoked ribs and hamburgers either.

Try picking one or two days a week where you plan vegetarian dinners. There are a ton of amazing and filling recipes that will have a far less cost per serving than most meat-based meals.

Doing this has really helped us rethink our protein to veggie portion sizes for all of our meals.

Get Healthy

It is impossible to understate just how much impact our health has on our long term financial goals. Future hospital visits, medications, etc can all derail even the best laid financial plans.

Luckily it is never too late to start getting healthy and the financial impacts can be immediate.

Work out at Home

Ditch the gym and start working out at home. You can follow along with yoga videos on Youtube, do a 20-minute HITT workout and buy a set of free weights and recoup the costs within 6 months.

Running or biking are also a super-easy way to get fit for a small cost.

Drink Water

We are extremely lucky to live in a place where water is plentiful, safe and cheap. Use that to your advantage and ditch the sodas, sparkling seltzers and juices and just drink water.

If you want a little variety, throw some fruit or cucumber into a pitcher the night before. Just a couple dollars a day in savings and it can lead to big money by the end of the year.

Bike to Work

Leave the car behind and start biking to work.

Unfortunately, many of us live in locations where this is impractical but that doesn’t mean to dismiss it altogether.

How can you add biking to your weekly routine? Can you bike to a bus stop? Most city buses have bike racks on the front to take you the rest of the way there.

Taking a hard look at your daily commuting can open up a world of possibilities that will get you out of the expensive traffic jams.

Review Your Finances

Take a look at where your money is going every month. Just going through the practice of reviewing your spending can have a big impact on where you choose to spend your money going forward.

Set a Budget

A few weeks ago we took a look at some ideas on how to set a budget and keep on track with your spending.

Going through the monthly process of reviewing our budget has made a huge change in how we handle our discretionary spending.

Pay off Debt

We are all well aware of the debt crisis currently taking place in this country. Credit card debt, student loan debt, and auto debt are all near or at record highs.

Managing just these payments alone can make it impossible for many to save money or even cover their basic living expenses.

Paying off your debt frees you up from having to sink funds into interest payments every month and will have an immediate impact on your savings.

This might mean making some hard choices like getting a cheaper car or downsizing your home but it will all be worth it, in the end, to be debt-free.

Another great way to manage your monthly debt load is to look into refinancing your larger debt obligations such as your student loans. Our friends over at LendEDU have some great tools available to compare student loan refinancing rates.

Negotiate the Monthly Bills

Most recurring, monthly bills can be negotiated. Full stop.

Cable, internet, insurance, cell phone, yard maintenance, etc.

Set aside a few hours once a year to call each company you are paying on a monthly basis and ask if they have a lower rate available.

If you don’t have the time there are even companies that will do it for you for a cut of the savings.

Eliminate Zombie Payments

While setting a budget and reviewing your finances be sure to keep an eye out for zombie payments.

These are the recurring bills you’re paying every month for services you are no longer using. Did you sign up for a free trial of a streaming service and forget to cancel? How about a yoga membership that you haven’t used in 6 months?

Take this chance to cut those out all at once.

Have Fun on the Cheap

Learn to love some of the cheaper things in life. Every date night doesn’t need to be dinner, drinks and a movie. The kids will have just as much fun throwing rocks in the water or riding their bikes as they will sitting through the latest animated movie.

Visit the Library

We are huge fans of the library and with smartphones, it is super easy to save money and never even have to visit in person.

Libby is an app that you can connect to your library card and download books and audiobooks for free.

We also use our library to rent children’s books, movies and passes to local museums.

Cut the Cord

A year or two ago we decided to finally cut the cord and switched over to YouTubeTV.

For those that don’t know, YouTubeTV is just like cable but it streams over the internet. We currently pay around $45/month and get 50 or so channels in HD plus DVR.

It took a while to make the change because I was sure that we would miss various shows and sporting events with a more limited channel lineup. To be honest, we hardly notice they are gone.

It has really opened our eyes to just how much mindless tv we used to watch just cause it was available and not so much because we got any real enjoyment out of it.

Utilize Travel Hacking

Travel hacking is THE best way to see the world for cheap. Hands down.

If you’re not aware: travel hacking entails accumulating airline or hotel points through credit card signup bonuses. Those points are then used to book travel for very little cost

While the wild west days of points churning may be in the past there are still tons of great opportunities to accumulate enough points to travel all over the world for a fraction of the retail cost.

Some great places to get started with travel hacking include:

Spend Time in Nature

Some of our favorite weekends involve nothing more than getting outside and wandering around a local park or trail. We are blessed to live in an area with incredible natural beauty and we use it to our full advantage.

Find your local parks or arboretums and take some time to get outside. It is free, good for you and it gives you a chance to connect with your local environment.

Minimize Your Living Expenses

Downsize Your Home

Take a look at how you utilize your space both inside and outside. Larger homes cost more to buy, have higher taxes, are more expensive to heat and cool, and have higher maintenance costs.

We are currently looking at moving into a house on a smaller property as the cost and time required to maintain our current space is untenable with two kids in the mix.

Do an Energy Efficiency Audit

Check out the website of your local power or natural gas company and see if they offer free or reduced-cost energy audits.

These typically consist of someone visiting your home and making recommendations on upgrades you can make to reduce your energy consumption.

Many of these upgrades are often offered at subsidized costs as well making them very economically favorable to you.

The thinking behind this is it is far cheaper for energy companies to pay homeowners to reduce their energy usage than it is to have to pay for a new powerplant or infrastructure upgrades.

Learn to Fix Anything (by watching YouTube)

Youtube has become a common theme here with our frugal living tips.

Once again it is an incredible free resource if you want to do some basic maintenance around the house.

In the last few months, I have watched videos on how to hang drywall, how to clear a downspout, and how to build a firewood rack.

Learning to do your own work around the house can easily save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

Final Thoughts on These Frugal Living Tips

Living frugally doesn’t have to mean pinching pennies and living a miserable life. These ideas are all easy for anyone to take on and save a significant amount of money without making huge lifestyle sacrifices.

What are your favorite frugal living tips in your life?