Welcome to Frugal February! The moneysaving month launched by our friends over at Big Girls Browse has begun, and we'll be doing everything we can to trim down our spending to only the essentials over the next four weeks. For details on exactly what we'll be forgoing, check out our Dollymix pledges, and follow the Twitter hashtag #Frugalfeb, where participants can compare notes on daily progress. A list of everyone taking part in Frugal February can be found here, and you're welcome to join up any time if you think you can do it!
To get us all in the true spirit of thrift and frugality today, we've enlisted the help of fabulous finance blogger Penny Golightly to answer some of our questions on how to live for less. We started by asking Penny to tell us a bit about herself, and how she makes life on a budget work for her.
1. Have you always been great at thrift or is it a skill you've learned more recently?
I grew up in a household that was quite
thrifty by necessity, so I learned the basics of old-fashioned budgeting at an
early age. After leaving home I became more interested in the internet and
other technology as ways to find bargains, keep tabs on earnings and spending,
and research financial products. I think you need a mix of old and new money
skills to get by
successfully nowadays.
2. What was your main lesson learned from your recent £10 a week challenge?
(Read more on the tenner-a-week plan)
It brought up a number of things really - mainly that it is possible to meet your goal successfully, and that you can also have a pretty enjoyable week too provided you go in with a positive attitude and a bit of a plan or a structure to it. You get more out of the experience if you're prepared to make more of an effort, which is why I also shake things up by watching a lot less TV than usual. It challenges you to get out of a rut, whether that's compulsive or unhealthy spending patterns, or other behaviours that maybe aren't doing you too many favours.
The experience makes you think hard about
your quality of life, and your priorities. It
also made me realise that I have lots of good resources in my life already, so
I appreciate them more: supportive and understanding friends, the ability to
adapt and be creative, useful skills, enough material goods
to get by, the whole lot.
3. What do you think is the crucial difference between being 'frugal' and being 'stingey'?
To me, stingey implies a certain amount of general mean-spiritedness linked with highly controlled behaviour around money, so it's about more than cash. If that's truly the case then people should take a long hard look at themselves. However, we also need to be careful when labelling others with this type of negative judgement - sometimes it's an insult that's applied to someone in order to gain some form of social control over them.
A fear of being perceived as being 'stingey'
and generally unkind can make many people vulnerable to exploitation on many
levels. Frugal is a less emotive term, it implies an element of sensible
management, and a lack of wastefulness. Having said that, I don't feel
particularly drawn to the word frugal either. Not everything I spend my cash on
could be considered sensible, and I firmly believe you need to budget in some
fun stuff on a regular basis too. You have to have room to let off a little steam
here and there, even if it's only £10 per month, or things start to feel too
regimented and restrictive.
5. Is it more acceptable to live frugally in a recession?
If there's a sense that 'we're all in the same boat' with something then it's easier to talk about, so that will probably make openness about living a financially sensible lifestyle more socially acceptable to the average person. Money management skills are part of your general set of
life skills, you don't have to hide them or be ashamed of them. Being smarter with money is now a necessity for everyone, whether it's considered acceptable or not, so I'm tempted to just say to hell with peer pressure and what other people think: if it's acceptable to you then
that's all that matters.
Check out Penny Golightly's blog and look out for some of her great moneysaving tips in our Frugal February features throughout the month!
