A long time back, Mapgirl tagged me to write about what I do to live frugally. That was right around the time when my cyclical behavior was in the most unfrugal part of the cycle. What’s worse, it was followed in the next few days by our old car dying and us deciding to buy an un-frugal car (which was still pre-owned but cost us more than what we thought we would ever pay for a car). With all this going on, I couldn’t bring myself to write a post about what I do to live frugally! But now, the dark days are behind us (hopefully) and we are striving hard to get back to our old selves. Frankly I am not much of a person for memes and tagging, and I don’t really know what the rules for participation are, and it is probably too late for me be part of this meme anyway. But writing about what I used to do to live frugally seems like a good exercise to make me think about what I need to do in the future to stay on track, so I decided to write about it anyway.

Cook at home as often as possible: I love cooking exotic dishes once in a while. And I *hate* regular everyday cooking. I am a foodie and at the end of a busy day spending an hour in the kitchen to fix a plain (aka “healthy and nutritious”) meal just doesn’t feel like it is worth the effort. But I have been trying hard to get into the habit and before this last break down, I used to cook 4-6 times a week! I need to get back in that mode. Since the last couple of week I have started getting back on track and have cooked about 5 times each week – just need to make sure that the habit sticks and I do not give in to the temptation to just pick up some food on my way home.

Take lunch with me to work at least 3 times a week: This is one thing I am really proud of. Even during my bleakest unfrugal days, I have stuck with this schedule. It has been a little over a year since I started working, and in the entire period I think I have gone out for lunch more than twice a week only 4-5 times, and even during those weeks, the max I ate out was 3 times a week. My next goal is to see if I can go for another year with less than 4-5 slip-ups.

We have coffee and breakfast at home, rest of the time we drink free coffee available at office. We don’t entirely ban coffee houses or starbucks, but usually reserve it for occasions when we meet old friends. Over time, we have come to associate coffee houses, with lazy leisurely evenings spent catching up and swapping old stories. And being loathe to spoil that association keeps us away from running in and out for an overpriced cup of coffee that is drank in a hurry at the desk or while driving.

We don’t have a telephone land line: We have gone for over 4 years now without a phone land line and have not missed it a bit. We both make sure that our cell phones stay charged all the time, so we are never at a loss of an instrument to make calls from. On the cell phone we have the least expensive plans with fairly low minutes, but since many of our friends have the same service provider, we get to talk to them for free. Only once in the past 4 years have we paid for extra minutes.

Shop for pretty much everything during “sale” and after researching the prices thoroughly. Avoid impulse buy. One of the first lessons someone told me when I landed in the US is that if you pay full price to buy anything, you are a sucker. At first I thought it was a joke. But now, I firmly believe it. As long as you can avoid impulse buying, you can get pretty much anything on sale.

Drive our cars to death: People who are regular visitors to this blog may be surprised that I have listed this here since I recently confessed that we bought a fairly unfrugal car. Over the long run though, our car ownership turns out to be quite frugal. We take good care of our cars (regular oil changes, get necessary repairs done as soon as we possibly can etc.,) and drive the car until the wheels fall off – literally. The car we just replaced was 14 years old and had 165K miles on it and we drove it until the engine finally quit on us. Both our current cars now are pre-owned and we plan to use them (hopefully) past the 150K mile mark too!

Hang out with like minded friends: It’s not just how frugal you are, but who you hang out with. If all the friends around you are spenders, then some time or the other you will crack up and give up being frugal. In our case, we have been fortunate enough to have friends who are fairly like-minded. Even though frugality is not the core of our conversation or anything, we still end up making choices that do not require too much expenditure, and still end up having a blast.

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