Juggling Between Frugal Living And A Great Lifestyle .

If you are here that means you have made your mind to focus on your savings and for that, you choose to give frugal living a shot.

OK! Make yourself comfortable, grab a cup of coffee and let's talk in detail about how frugal living can help you increase your savings while still, you can live a great life.

Concept of frugal living.

There is a misconception that practicing frugality indicates misery. NO!
Frugal lifestyle does not mean starving or depriving yourself of buying clothes or the other necessities and comforts to yourself. Rather it's about spending more on things that are important to you and less on that aren't. Frugal living is a solution to many money-related problems.

You don't have to be born frugal to save money and spend less. It's something that you can simply try, learn and become good at over a course of time and gradually develop perfect methods of a frugal lifestyle and end up saving a lot, while still enjoy your life to the fullest.

Tips and benefits of frugal living.

1. Budgeting -It's a technique of making a plan to spend your money and gives you a clear picture of how much is your ending up each month. Budgeting allows you to know in advance whether you'll have enough money to do all the things you would like to do in that particular month.

**Benefit - It helps you to achieve your life goals like keeping grocery bills in your hand, saving for retirement or keeping yourself out of debt.

#Tips to smart budgeting.
(a) Zero-based budget- The formula is, your income minus all your expenses equals zero.
Budgeting is simply balancing your expenses with your income. You should give every single penny a name even before the month begins.

(b) Budget differently - You see, it's not necessary that every month will have the same budgeting strategy because every month demands different expenditures.

Apart from your basic expenses like grocery bills, electricity bill, water bill, gas bill, etc. you absolutely have different expenses in different months like vacation trips, visits to friends and relatives, birthdays, outings, house, and car maintenance. So make sure to adjust your budget every month as per the requirement of the month.

(c) Divide and rule strategy - Make divisions of the expenditures. Once the basic necessities like paying off debt(if any) fooding, clothing, transportation, various bills, etc are taken care of, you can fill the rest of your divisions like savings for retirement, trips, etc in your budget.

2. Before you go shopping:-

# Make a list - before stepping out for shopping quickly list down what you need. That will set your mind and you will buy exactly what you need.

**Benefit - You will save your time and money as well.
# Prioritize the items you need - there are times when we can survive without that particular item maybe because we know that we have a substitute for that so make sure that you list down the items in order from higher priority to lower priority.

**Benefit - You will remain determined to your list throughout your shopping and there won't be any chance of missing out anything.

#Follow the 15-day rule - This is something that I practice and would recommend to you too. According to this rule, you should give some time to yourself to think twice about buying some items. This funda works with the items that are in lower priority in your list. All you need to do is don't buy those items for the very first time; take some time say 15 days to realize if you really need it. There are chances that later on you realise that it wasn't of much use to you and hey you end up saving money.

# Select your stores - Like you can go to a particular store for a similar category of things.
That will help you avail extra benefits, extra offers, gift coupons, etc.
#Beware of sale traps - We go mad when we see this word SALE. STOP!! Sales often lead to stock our homes with absolutely unwanted items and of course wastage of money.

3. Think of investments - To invest means to allocate your money in expectation of some benefit in the future. The benefit from an investment is called a return.

#invest in mutual funds with low risk or zero risks. The returns are less(in zero risk investments) but it is worth trying.

#fix a baseline amount of your monthly savings.
**benefit - will help you save at least a minimum amount every month.
#try to make a 1% increase in your savings every month.
**benefit - At the end of the year you will end up saving a lot without getting much stressed throughout the year.

4. Save on transportation.

#Try one-go all-done technique - That means you can do all your work done either while you are on your way to the office or back home. Just make a to-do-list before leaving and get them done one by one.

**benefit- you will save on fuel expenses.
#Cycling - Walk or Cycle if possible to visit nearby places if possible.
**benefit - You will save time on exercising and work out.
#Share and Care- Either you can go for public transit to travel to your workplace or you can share the vehicle with your neighbor/colleague/friend if they too are like-minded.

**Benefit - You will eventually make a good social bonding and who knows you may end up finding a great friend forever.

5. Save on your bills.

#Grow your veggies - If you like gardening then you can try converting that extra land in a small farm and grow coriander leaves, potatoes, tomatoes, green chilies, cabbages, etc.

**Benefit- You will eat organic vegetables and fruits.

6. Save on gym, parlor, laundry, household help, etc. if possible.

#Try DIYs at home.
#make one-time investment in beauty kits or pedicure manicure kits.

7. Save on furniture, clothing, drinks(both hard drink and soft drink). A drink in any pub may cost you almost equal to the price of the entire bottle. Try to make yourself your drink at home as per your choice and enjoy it with your savings.

There are tons of other ideas that can help you save a lot. The basic idea is to cut extra expenses and do smart money management.