What "frugal" habits do you have?

[yonksgirl]

What corners do you cut, or in what ways are you frugal?

My hubby was out of work for 6 months and I had a rude wake up call! It turns out that we can pay all our bills with less then half of his pay, and I have no idea where is rest of it went! :confused: Well I really do know....on stuff we did not need! We were so careless with our money....sigh.....well I learned, so now I am all about saving as much money as poss!
~We have turned down the heat in the house
~I have started to clip coupons
~I combine trips to save gas
~I have organized everything so I know what I have and do not go out and buy something I already have
~I unplug everything when I am done using it

[Csara]

Those are great tips. We are also very careless with where our money goes and it sucks when you get a wake up call. The sad thing is that I can't even list any frugal habits right now. Need to work on that!!!

[Turtleheadfred]

I quit work several years back, and it is AMAZING what we can do without!

I obviously don't need all the "work" corporate clothes anymore, so that definitely saves.

We turn out lights when we're not in the room.

We've always kept our thermostat reasonable.

Coupon clipper too.

Sale shopper - but only for what we actually NEED.

If there's something we can do ourselves rather than pay someone - we do that too.

[meliz]

Turn heat and lights off at night... (but see recent query). Hub never does either... this annoys me to no end. :)

Look for sales (well, mostly:))-- I am the queen of sale surfing! I always compare shop. It gives me a little thrill.

Plan meals (ha, when this happens) according to what is on sale that week

I never buy things at Sears (or in the States at Khols) unless they are on sale-- they ALWAYS have sales (and I think regular prices are jacked up to allow for it).

Use my Chapters card-- when you buy alot of books these are so worth it.

We bought a wee little car, with an eye to saving on gas/emmissions.

[heather6773]

1. combine trips to save gas
2. turn heat down-its a challenge between me and the gas company... them to see how many times they can show up to deliver and me to keep them out!!!
3. I traded my older van in for a small car(better gas mileage)
4. Don't eat out as much
5. make my own coffee
6. thrift stores for clothes
7. Cut WAY WAY back on Christmas shopping. Only buying for my immediate family and not every person I ever met.

[RedBedHead]

7. Cut WAY WAY back on Christmas shopping. Only buying for my immediate family and not every person I ever met.
I really wanted to do this this year! My brother and I haven't exchanged gifts since our kiddos were born. DH's family, on the other hand, won't hear of the siblings not exchanging even though he has 3 brothers. The weird thing is, his parents don't buy gifts for any of them. It's something that we feel we have been forced into every year and I don't know how to say, "We aren't exchanging with the grown ups this year".

[Deana]

Here are some frugal things I do:

-clip coupons

-meal plan and only buy what's on the grocery list

-buy in bulk at Costco

-keep the thermostat at 78 during the summer, 70 during the winter

-we drive cheap cars that are paid off. Dh drives a '92 Acura Legend that is paid off and I drive a quad cab truck. Having no car payments is awesome!

-we pay our mortgage 2x/month. It is the same total amount but it is broken up into 2 payments which somehow cuts our interest dramatically (I don't know how the finance part works but it does!)

-I rarely buy clothes for myself and if I do it's either on sale or from target.

-we go to the library instead of buying books (we both read a lot)

-lately I am super cheap when it comes to shampoo, hair products, laundry detergent, etc. I buy what's on sale