Frugal Living

As mentioned previously on this blog, I was no stranger to budgeting and frugality. I've spent much of the past several years working in media production, where budgeting is par for the course. Prior to working in the media industry I balanced my studies with part time administration work - so I've spent many hours reconciling my employers' spending and balancing their books. I'm good at it. I get paid to do it. And believe it or not, I actually enjoy it.

Combined with the fact that I HATE any form of waste, I like to live as sustainably and self-sufficiently as any urban, inner-city professional can and I try to be as healthy as possible - frugal living comes pretty naturally to me.  I'm also pathetically, hopelessly, BAD at shopping (no seriously, I am). A trip to the supermarket can take hours, as I scan the shelves for every available option before intently reading the list of ingredients and weighing up the health implications versus the potential savings of every item I put in my basket. As for clothes shopping... 99% of the time I get so overwhelmed and exhausted by the vast array of choices, I end up leaving having accomplished nothing more than circling an air-conditioned mall for a few hours and getting sore feet.

Regardless - being tight-fisted is one thing, but saving enough to fund a few years without income is a completely different matter. That required a whole new level of frugality. I explained in my previous post how we came to reach the figure that we did ($30,000). Now without going into too much detail, let's just say that's close to half my annual salary (as a freelancer, the exact figure goes up and down). So that meant living on half my annual salary (or less) for at least one year. The first step? Knowing how much I was currently spending.


I created a spreadsheet (nothing like a good spreadsheet!) to track my outgoings for 3 months. Why 3 months? Well, whilst fixed expenses (e.g. rent, phone etc) didn't change; electricity bills and food spending and social spending was harder to predict. By dutifully logging these expenses in my spreadsheet for 3 months, I was able to get a clear picture on how much my life in Melbourne really cost.

After 3 months I went through all outgoings and categorised them into fixed expenses (i.e. costs that didn't change month-to-month) such as rent, phone contract, internet, public transport. I then categorised purchases that were food/social spending - as this was an area where I could definitely make some compromises. From the food/social spending category I then added up the total for 3 months, before calculating a monthly average. I now had a figure I could aim to bring down.

I quickly did some further calculations - I deducted my fixed expenses per month from my income per month. With what was left, I then deducted my current (average) food/social spend per month so I could see what I had leftover. I quickly multiplied that amount by 12 to see what I could currently save in a year. It wasn't enough.

But - it did allow me to see how far I needed to bring my food/social spending down in order to reach my goal. Fortunately, that figure wasn't too scary. With some self-discipline and minor lifestyle changes, I could definitely get there...

I racked my brain for money-saving ideas. I created a new tab on my spreadsheet and began compiling a list:

1. Stop drinking alcohol, or only have beers/wine at home instead of at bars.
2. Bring lunch to work every day.
3. Reduce eating out to once a week (or less), opt for cheap options with groups ($25pp or less).
4. Shop smart - go to farmers markets, Aldi etc. Buy in bulk when possible and freeze.
5. Have a meal plan for the week and shop only once, so you don't have to visit the supermarket every day (and be tempted).
6. Stop getting taxis at night and take public transport/walk instead (when possible).
7. Only go to the cinema on discount days, when you have a free pass or win tix, or rent DVDs instead (borrow from friends?)
8. Borrow from the library instead of buying books. Or download free ones. 
9. Sell any items no longer in use.
10. Replace clothes only when they wear out - mend/re-sole etc where possible.
11. No more hair colouring - and limit hair cuts to once every 6 months.
12. No more daily coffee - buy the ground beans and make at home. 

... you get the picture. 

Now, for some that may not look like that big a deal. For others, it may seem extreme. But I'll wager that for most average Australians, there's at least some points on that list they could apply without changing their lifestyles too dramatically.

Take the morning coffee for example - at $4/day (from most Melbourne cafes) that adds up to between $20-30 a week easily. I could go to my local market and buy the ground beans for around $8 a bag, which would last me weeks. That's a saving of over $1,000 - $1,500 a year (easily a flight to Europe!)

Similarly by not getting taxi's home at night (no matter how low the fare), we also saved a decent amount of money over time. To be honest, in a city like Melbourne with at least 2-3 transport options for most suburbs (bus, train or tram) there's really no excuse. Yes, it isn't as easy and can take a bit longer to get home. And obviously safety is important - I'm not advocating anyone do anything that makes them feel unsafe. But for us, it made no sense whatsoever to spend that money when we lived so close to the city (20-25 minutes on foot). And as we weren't really going out squandering our hard-earned cash bar-hopping, we were always able to get ourselves home early enough (i.e. before trams/buses stopped running) and before we got too tired. 

Speaking of bars - I did choose to stop drinking completely for a period of about 2-3 months. It  actually started after one-too-many hangovers (not just as a cost saving measure). I reluctantly had to admit that at the ripe old age of 30, my body just couldn't bounce back like it used to. And I'm not talking about a big, binge-drinking session either - simply sharing a bottle of wine or consuming more than a few beers over the course of an evening was enough to make me wake up nauseous with a pounding head. The party girl had officially retired and put away her corkscrew. 

And without getting into the whole problem of Australia's binge-drinking culture (if your interested in that - I highly recommend you read Jill Stark's brilliant book 'High Sobriety'), I have to stress that this is possibly one of the best cost saving measures most of us could afford to make. Thanks to exorbitant licensing costs (and taxes), most alcohol consumed in bars in Melbourne is ridiculously overpriced. It's not uncommon to pay $11-14 for a mere glass of wine. Or upwards of $9 for a pint of beer. That's basically the cost of a night in a dorm per drink. Yes, it's cheaper to buy the booze at your local bottle shop and consume it before going out etc etc... But even so, a cheap 6-pack or bottle of wine is still a night of accommodation somewhere. It all adds up!

So I decided to forgo alcohol altogether over winter, when we were going out less anyway. And after my period of abstinence, I found myself healthier and happier for it - so I drank dramatically less when I did decide to drink again.       

But the biggest cost-saving measure unquestionably involved changes to our diet. Whilst I'd already got into good habits at university and dutifully packed my lunch for work every day, there was still room for improvement. Like most people, we indulged ourselves in a meal out most weeks. A lazy Saturday brunch, or a Sunday lunch with friends. A weeknight meal at the pub after a hard day at work... just one of those meals could easily cost $40-50 for two, so twice a week that's close to $100. Over the course of a year that's upwards of $5,000! In some parts of South East Asia you can live an entire month on $1000 each (for all food, accom, booze, transport etc). So by omitting just ONE pub/cafe meal a week, we could afford a nice holiday in Thailand... 

Following that realisation we began by limiting ourselves to just one meal out per week. By far the easiest to omit were the cafe brunches or weeknight pub meals, when it was just the two of us. As we still wanted to enjoy eating out with friends on occasion, that became our only sanctioned spending on meals. Fortunately for us, most of our friends enjoyed Vietnamese/Chinese/Thai etc as much as we did - and Melbourne is saturated with excellent, CHEAP Asian food! And many weeks we didn't eat out socially at all, so we simply cooked every night of the week. Yep, every single meal we consumed we prepared ourselves. 

Not only that, but every single meal was pre-planned. Why? Because by jotting down a few meal ideas for the week, I could then shop accordingly and look at areas where I could save money. We weren't buying on impulse after work when we were tired or hungry. We didn't need to think about dinner during the week at all, because we'd already planned a week's worth of meals on the weekend. Every Saturday morning I would scan the fridge/freezer/cupboards and see what we already had, then jot down 7 ideas for dinner. I'd then list the ingredients we needed to buy to make those meals. In addition, I'd add some extra items for breakfast/lunch (but this was much easier, as we generally had the same thing every day or took leftovers). 

We would then go to our local market where the savings were insane. Bags of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes etc for $2. Bunches of parsley, basil and rosemary for $1 (sadly I couldn't grow my own herbs in our tiny 1 bedroom apartment - despite trying!) We'd get huge farm-fresh eggs and jars of home-made honey and jam... my favourite stall sold every variety of legumes, nuts and seeds imaginable and the stall owner would always make up a mix for me and give us a considerable discount (as regular customers). If we went towards the end of trade, we could buy loaves of fresh sourdough at half price. Or entire trays of fruit. 

Needless to say we ate WAY more fruit and veg... It was just far cheaper to buy in season and in bulk, and then base our meals around the vegetables we had (instead of the meat). In fact, many days we simply didn't eat meat at all and ate entirely vegetarian meals. When we did eat meat, we would buy cheaper cuts or simply buy fish and chicken in bulk (which was often cheaper) and then divide into portions ourselves and freeze. We also greatly reduced our meat portions to stretch our purchases further - e.g. I'd halve the quota of chicken in a recipe and bulk up the vegetables, or add legumes and pulses instead. 

The point I want to emphasise is that frugal living needn't equal depriving yourself - in fact, it can have many benefits. By eating this way we weren't only saving money, but we were healthier than we'd ever been (and I became a much better cook!) In fact, I took such pleasure from this way of eating that I became somewhat obsessed. I'd trawl the internet for recipes, spend entire Sundays cooking up a storm (and then freeze half of it for a quick weeknight meal). I'd invite friends over for dinner instead of going out, as I enjoyed cooking for them far more than I enjoyed having someone cook for me. Or we'd pack a picnic basket and go to the local park, or have a BBQ on the Yarra in good weather... all far cheaper and far more enjoyable (in my opinion) than eating out. 

As for our other cost saving measures... well, those were a no-brainer really. We just stopped buying stuff. As I said, I'm notoriously bad at clothes shopping so it wasn't hard! The only time I purchased anything was when something else fell apart and couldn't be repaired - and then instead of buying something new, I scoured the Red Cross or the Salvos for a replacement. And I don't mean high-end vintage fashions either - simply things like T-shirts, summer dresses, clothes for work. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found too - more often than not the store had exactly what I wanted, sometimes brand new (i.e. it had been donated from a retailer that failed to sell it, rather than being pre-loved and pre-worn by someone else). 

Similarly with sites like Gumtree, eBay etc pretty much anything can be bought second-hand nowadays far cheaper than buying in-store, brand new. And if you must have something new, online shopping means you can find the best bargains and have them delivered, instead of wasting your precious time shopping! 

I will concede that not everyone takes as much pleasure out of this lifestyle as I do. I'm unashamedly anti-consumerist, so instead of feeling deprived by not getting my hair cut/coloured and by forfeiting beauty treatments (embrace your natural beauty ladies!) I felt liberated. I'm also a control freak, so the DIY aspect of this lifestyle certainly appeals. And nothing makes me feel more free than not having a lot of STUFF.

Not to mention the immense satisfaction of watching my bank balance grow, knowing we were getting closer every day to our savings goal :) 

Far more rewarding (in my opinion) and a far better use of my hard-earned money!