The other day I was sitting at home and I started to reminisce about the things my family did growing up.  My parents immigrated from Portugal in the 70′s having grown up under the shadow of the dictator Salazar.  They had 4 boys when they came over and they eventually had me here in Canada making me the 5th boy. My father worked long hours in a steel factory producing sewer tops and my mother worked the standard office cleaning and baby sitting. All of these elements set the scene for a frugal upbringing and you know what? ….I loved it!

How Were My Parents Frugal

To feed a family as large as ours took creativity and though they bought in bulk at the grocery store that just couldn’t cut it. They needed to get more for their dollar and to that they had to go to the source, the Ontario farmer.  The fact that my parents lived in the city never stopped them from using their Portuguese farming skills. We had a long list of things with did yearly which helped sustain our family and make sure that we were never wanting for food. Every year we did plenty of things and not limited to the following:

• butcher our own pigs
• butcher our own chickens
• buy a full slab of beef
• bean picking
• strawberry picking
• wine making
• pepper paste
• our own garden

All of this would eventually end up in 2 deep freezers in the basement. We always had good meals at an affordable price for my parents incomes.

How These Things Affected Me

My parents did these things because they were cost effective but there were great side affects to this frugality. They always made it into an event which included all of my brothers, my grand parents, my uncles and even some of my neighbors and their families. Not only did we learn were food actually came from and how to really get it at a good price but it also created  a sense of unity. I look back on these things and they are some of the best moments of my childhood.

This is one of the reasons I wanted to seed my own tomato plants. I’ve been spending more time with my father to try and learn some of these skills and I hope I do these sort of things with my kids. I’ll need to remember that frugality doesn’t always need to be about saving money but can be a great opportunity to build family.

What fond frugal memories do you have from your childhood ?

-mfd-

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This is a post I’ve had sitting awhile waiting to be written and with Four Pillar’s recent post “What Does Frugal Mean To You?” I’ve decided to actually write it.  Now FP lists some common interpretations of frugality and does a good job looking at them from different perspectives. I just wanted to add how they apply to me:

• I spend less than I use to – I don’t really know because I try and not look at what I spend month to month even though I have a budget
• I spend as little as possible – I think I do this already but I’m sure someone else could probably find more ways for me to save
• I expend effort and time to be frugal – I try not too. I rather spend my time doing something more productive like sleeping on the couch
• I save a lot – I save 30% of my income….is that a lot ?

So how do I define frugal?

Well the dictionary definition of frugal contains a lot of words like meager, scanty, thrifty and chary. These are great but there is one problem, they don’t provide any bounds or context. Without bounds or context you have no measure as to what is frugal. My definition gives  both context and bounds as well a new synonym for frugal. Here it is:

Frugal

- Creative (synonym) ways to saving that allows you to achieve your financial goals (context) while maintaining a desirable lifestyle for yourself (bounds).

Bounds and Context

By setting financial goals you can put your frugality into context.   You are truly frugal if the decisions you make have a significant impact in meeting your financial goals.  You could save 50 cents on detergent and call yourself frugal but whats the point? How much closer would you really be to retiring with a million dollars? If you want to be frugal then find ways to save that have real impact. Now there is the tendency for frugality to go amiss.  Setting certain lifestyle expectations and making sure your frugality doesn’t impact those expectations will lead to an enjoyable life for your self. Why go through all the hassle of being frugal if your miserable all the time. Remember YOU run your life, not your frugality.

The principal of pay yourself 10% first before you start spending is in essence a frugal decision. By saving 10% you will have that real impact on your goals with the remainder of your money to live your life the way you want to.

Why is creative a synonym for frugal?

Well you’ve gone through the trouble of setting your financial goals and you’ve decided there is a certain lifestyle you would like to live while meeting those goals.  The problem here is that your goals and your lifestyle may not necessarily work in tandem and this is where being creative comes into play.  It requires creative ways to save in order to maintain your lifestyle while meeting your financial goals. It’s this creativity that will keep everything balanced and working together.

As an example, I’ve been struggling to cut down my spending on coffee at Tim Hortons.  I was spending at least $5 a day which is about $1825 over the course of a year.  For a long time I manage to drink the swill from the machine at work (you can image how bad it is if Tim Hortons is a step up) but eventually I couldn’t stomach the stuff anymore. I had to find a better solution. I tried freeze dried coffee which is the stuff I grew up on. I think it tastes better than Tim’s but for some reason I couldn’t get it to taste right at work. I then tried a french press but I found it a bit of a hassle having to go back and fourth to the kitchen. I ultimately settled on a small coffee maker at my desk. I just get the water from the cooler nearby and I’m good to go. For me this was a creative solution for a financial dilemma that will have a significant impact in achieving my financial goals while maintaining the coffee-drinking lifestyle I want. It was truly a frugal moment.

Conclusions

This is the definition that I think of when I think of frugal and is how I currently run my life.  I find creative ways to save money that has a real impact without having to turn my life upside down. I can say that up until recently my life was in balance. The whole “spend $100 a month” thing is not working out and I am now frugally burnt out but that is an article for tomorrow.

-mfd-

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One of the first posts on this blog was “Frugal Tip – A Big Mac My Way“. The premise was you can pretty much get a Big Mac at half the price. This article had disappeared into obscurity until a reader posted the following comment:

daveking on April 12th, 2009 12:10 am

No offense, but this is getting on the borderline of cheap. I worked in retail before (Starbucks) and I hate it when customers do stuff like this to get a cheaper price. For example, they would order small coffee in a medium cup. After adding milk they get a medium cup. Also the kid’s hot chocolate is 99 cents. Two kid’s hot chocolate is the same as a grade hot chocolate which cost $3

The comment set me back a bit because I thought the whole bargain Big Mac idea was the greatest thing since man/woman discovered fire. Then I began to wonder if I was cheap and a few questions came to mind:

What is cheap and who defines it?

When I look up the word cheap at dicitionary.com one of the definitions is ” stingy; miserly”. Well that seems to have quite the negative tone and can’t possibly apply to me. Lets move away from the official definition and see what popular opinion has to say, I looked up the word cheap on Wikipedia and I get redirected to the word Miser. This doesn’t look good for me, I’ve never really considered myself to be a stingy miser like Mr.Scrooge. However these are just definitions and ultimately its your actions that truly define you as being cheap. This leads us into the more important question in determining if I am cheap:

What actions are considered cheap and how are those  judged?

People walk a fine line between frugal money saving and being cheap. There is no international rule book for cheapness but rather individual opinion. It is my belief that these individual opinions rely on two factors:

1 – The value you place on money – People usually consider cheapness as a reflection of the amount of money saved versus the amount of effort required. (e.g. pick up 5 cents and you’re cheap, pick up $5 and its your lucky day, or walk 5 extra blocks to save $1 on dry cleaning)

2 – Your moral objection – Your moral’s are a very big defining factor on what is cheap. People feel by getting a deal in a round about way that they are breaking the rules or cheating someone. (e.g. order pasta with unlimited bread and salad, fill up on bread and salad, take the pasta home with you)

In the end  Daveking’s individual opinion on what is cheap is based on a combination of the value he puts on money and how it conflicts with his morals. For me cheap is judged on my individual opinion so having a double cheese burger dressed like a mac isn’t considered cheap in my book. I save a $1.50 over a traditional Big Mac with no added effort so the dollar value is worth it. I also have no moral objections because I’m not taking advantage of the company. They have an explicit “dress like a mac” button that they charge me for. Would this be any different if I wanted my fillet-o-fish dressed like a mac ? Not at all. Now I would consider it cheap if I asked for 25 tomato slices on my burger and then took the tomatoes home to use on my salad for the next day.

Looking at  some of the examples that Daveking gave there is one we agree on and one we don’t. I personally think ordering a small coffee in a medium cup so that you can fill up the rest with milk is cheap. You paid for a  small coffee and in turn for a small cup. You are taking advantage of the fact the company is courteous enough to offer a larger cup as well as free access to the milk. You are cheating the company and therefore this conflicts with my morals. However ordering 2 kid’s hot chocolates instead of a regular hot chocolate is perfectly fine in my book. In the end the company has accounted for the cost of kid’s hot chocolates. Morally I’m fine because the company offered a product and you paid for it. I’m good with the dollar value  because a buck is a buck and requires very little effort other than the fact you now have to carry around two cups.  In the end people have individual opinions and some people will find your actions cheap while others will congratulate you on a frugal job well done.

I’m really curious about the varying opinion on what is cheap. Here are some questions that I would love to know if you consider them cheap and why:
1 – A double cheeseburger dressed like a mac.  It’s a $1.50 less than a big mac but tastes the same
2 – Order a small coffee in a medium cup to fill the rest up with milk and essentially get a medium coffee at a small coffee price
3 – Order 2 kids hot chocolate’s in leu of the equivelant adult hot chocolate. You save a $1.
4 – Pick up 5 cents
5 – Pick up $5
6 – Walk 5 extra blocks to save $1 on dry cleaning
7 – Order a pasta meal that has unlimited bread and salad. Fill up on bread and salad and take the pasta home with you.

-mfd-

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Growing up my father always had a large garden in the yard. During the summer months it supplied most the herbs and vegetables that we ate. When winter came around my parents would freeze things like tomatoes for sauces. I always took this for granted but now that I’m older I’ve grown to appreciate the satisfaction in growing your own vegetables and the savings it provides. Living in a condo doesn’t make this easy.

My father is getting on in years and has now substantially decreased the size of his garden to a few square feet. His tomatoes have always been a main stay in his garden and he would distribute them to all the neighbors. He has been cultivating two species for over 20 years. The first is what he calls beef heart (explicitly not Beef steak) and the second is an Italian plum tomato. These bad boys grow to be bigger than softballs and are all meat with very little water. This year I’ve decided to try and grow my own tomatoes in hopes that I can continue to cultivate these seeds until we get our own home.

The main issue is we live in a north facing condo which means very little sunlight. Tomatoes need more than 6 hours to produce adequate fruit and we get 4 if we’re lucky. Though fruit would be nice, at this point we would be content to have the seeds sprout so we can distribute them to friends and family. They will have to keep the tomato lines alive until we get our own home.

This is a little green house we got from Walmart for about $8. The individual planting pellets will make it easy to distribute the plants.

Here are the wonderful seeds. Cost…Free. Apparently this is how you save seeds from year to year. You just dry them on some cardboard for a few days and you’re good to go.

This is the balcony at about 2 in the afternoon. Dark and dreary until about 4 or 5 PM.

Well this is my quest to not only grow my own vegetables but keep a tradition alive. Wish me luck.

If you got any words of wisdom I’d love to hear it.

-mfd-

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Spending less than you make is a big part of being frugal. Now some people will say you should never dine out but I personally don’t believe in that. In our budget there is money set aside for dining out because some times we don’t have time to cook and other times we just don’t want to cook. Once in a while that dining out budget goes towards the McDonald’s Big Mac. The Big Mac has been the signature sandwich at McDonalds for over 50 41 years. I love it and so do a lot of other people.

For the last 3 months I’ve been taking an alternate path to getting that great taste. I order a double cheeseburger and ask that they “dress it like a Mac”. The only difference, other than the price, is you get an extra slice of cheese and you don’t get the middle slice of bread (word on the street is they put that in if you ask for it). A Big Mac costs in the range of about $3.50 while the double cheeseburger costs $1.39 and an extra $0.30 for dressing it like a Mac. My fiancé and I order 2 double cheeseburgers like a Mac and 2 medium fries for $7.64. Even with coupons we were hard pressed to find a deal just as good.

Good luck and enjoy but be warned, the first week we did this we had Mcdonalds three times because now it was not only convenient but it was even cheaper.

-mfd-

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