Daisy Luther - The Ultimate Guide to Frugal Living: Save Money, Plan Ahead, Pay Off Debt & Live Well

Copyright 2020 by Daisy Luther

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Daniel Brount

Cover illustration by gettyimages

Print ISBN: 978-1-63158-600-2

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63158-601-9

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to Amy Dacyczyn. She doesnt know me or anything. Im just a fangirl. Her warmth, advice, adorable illustrations, and compassion helped me through more than one difficult time. Her work completely changed the course of my life and helped me find hope when I felt the most hopeless. The Tightwad Gazette put me on a path that helped me survive poverty, loss, single motherhood, and the launch of a dream, all with my head held high. If any of you know Amy, please tell her I said thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Its tough to make ends meet these days, and I know its not just me. Personal financial problems seem to be an epidemic lately. Gone are the days when a person works at the same stable job until they get handed a nice watch at their retirement party. Gone are the days when medical care and insurance were affordable. Gone are the days when you could fill a grocery cart with cheap basics for less than $50 per week. Sometimes youre winning financially, and sometimes youre losing. Throughout my adult life, I have learned that financial stability is an illusion for most of us. Ive worked hard and made some pretty decent money. Ive scrimped and gotten by on an astonishingly small amount of money. And through it all, the lesson that was repeated over and over is that it can all change in the blink of an eye.

One day you have a great job. The next day, the business for which you work folds due to cash flow problems you didnt even know they were having. One day you have money in the bank. Youve almost saved up enough for a down payment on a home, and then disaster strikes. Someone in your family requires expensive medical care and only a fraction of it is covered by your health insurance... if you even have health insurance. One day, you have a nice home. The next day, its wiped out by a natural disaster and you discover there was some fine-print rider on your homeowners policy that means the damage isnt covered. Maybe the primary breadwinner is stricken with a chronic illness and cant work anymore. Maybe the interest rates on a variable mortgage become so high that you cant make your payments anymore. Maybe you were already living paycheck to paycheck and an emergency like your car breaking down makes enough of a dent in your budget that you wont be buying groceries this month. There are enough horror stories about sudden economic disasters on a personal level to fill a book, but needless to say, money problems can happen to anyone. I know this because Ive been there more than once.

My Advent into Frugality, Cheapskatery, and Thrift

My childhood was one of privilege. My mother stayed home with me, my father was a doctor, and money was never, ever a problem. When I became an adult, I never expected money to be a problem. So, you can imagine my shock when my husband lost his job when our brand-new baby girl was only one month old. We were waiting for unemployment insurance to kick in while he desperately sought a job. The area we lived in was economically depressed, however, and there was no work to be found. He picked up some work in the fields during harvest season, but aside from that, we went several months with no other income.

And it was terrifying. We spent a month eating nothing but frozen bagels that I had bought on sale, the small amount of produce we coaxed from our vegetable garden, and a monster tub of peanut butter. I washed out diapers in the tub because we didnt have a washer and dryer in our apartment, and we couldnt afford to go to the laundromat. One day, I splurged and picked up a book by a lady named Amy Dacyczyn for $2 at a library sale. At the time, I had no idea that that book was going to change my life. I was just hoping for a few tips to help us get by. But The Tightwad Gazette continues to influence me more than twenty years later.

We made it through that rough spot, but life doesnt just turn around and become perfect forevermore for most of us. During good times, we tend to relax our frugal efforts, and when a financial downturn hits, we have to get back into the mentality. I was equipped to deal with tough times until the biggie happened. When I became a single mom working a low-paying job, we got by. We ate a lot of macaroni and cheese, but we did okay. When I got laid off for a few months during a slow period at work, we lived off our pantry and handled everything with aplomb. But the year I turned forty, a series of events so awful occurred that everything in my life changed. My dad, one of the most wonderful people you could ever meet, got sick. I had a terrible feeling that this was it for him, and unfortunately, I was right. I took time off work; I spent lots of money traveling back and forth from Canada to Memphis, Tennessee, where he was hospitalized for several months, to spend every moment I could with him. When he passed away, I was devastated. Nothing in my life before or since has been so terrible.

When we returned home after the funeral, I went back to workfor a few weeks. This was during the last big economic crisis, and when my company downsized, I was one of the casualties. I no longer had the money to dump into a side business I had begun (but neglected during my fathers illness). We had been living frugally in comparison to many people, but not frugally enough to counteract that personal economic disaster. Looking back, Im not sure if any amount of frugality could have really made a difference. (Thats something else well talk more aboutsometimes things so financially devastating occur that they cant be prevented even if you are the epitome of thrift.) We became even more thrifty of a necessity, and I deeply resented the need to do so every single time I stepped into a mall, purchased groceries, or emptied my bank account to keep the utilities on and a roof over our heads. There was nothing extra left over for fun, or even secondary needs. It was a very grim time for our family.

Within a few months, I had lost my house to foreclosure, my car to repossession, and my business due to a lack of operating capital. I didnt want to go anywhere for fear that I would run into somebody I knew, and theyd look at me with scorn, or even worse, with pity. Every material thing we had was gone except a few pieces of furniture, the laptop from my business, and my books. When the depression began to lift, I saw that getting out from under that mountain of monthly bills had actually provided me with a gift of enormous freedom. I realized that my life could take a different turn. I was no longer tied to anything. And thats when I began to embrace my cheap side. I loved it like a long-lost child who had come back to Mamas arms. I became what I called a Frugalite and I loved it. I realized that I no longer needed to buy into the systemic debt that had been the source of my personal economic disaster. By being as self-sufficient as possible, by cutting my spending, and by not needing the system, I was winning. I was becoming truly free.