My Saving Obsession that Saves Me Money

I have this one obsession with water: I like to save it and not waste any of it.  It all started when I wanted to wash dishes and it took FOREVER for the water from the kitchen tap water to warm up.  This happened every time I wanted hot water from the tap and I soon discovered that it’s because of the pipe length between the water heater and the kitchen is very long.  I could not let all the cold water go to waste so I started collecting it in pitchers in the kitchen.  My obsession was born.

I do not skip washing in order to save water, and I do laundry as much as other people.  However, I ALWAYS turn off the faucet while brushing my teeth or washing my face and I use the water from my pitchers in the kitchen to fill the kettle, boil noodles or rice, and drink water.  I also wait until there are enough dirty dishes to be ‘worth’ washing them and I use dirty dish water to water my plants.  Outside, I collect rainwater to water my tomato plants and I drive my car on the lawn before washing it so the water used also waters my grass.  I run the dishwasher on the shortest cycle will get my dishes clean.

My husband’s saving obsession is turning off lights.  As soon as I leave a room, he asks me to turn off the light (even if in my head, I know I’ll be back within 5 minutes).  Because I don’t like a house that is dark, I tend to keep a few lights on around the house, especially in winter.

Another of my obsession is to use natural light in winter; first thing in the morning, I open all the curtains and blinds in the house to let the heat and light from the sun come in. As soon as the sun sets, I cover all the windows so that we do not lose any heat through them (we have very large windows). 

You may not have an obsession yet; however, it`s relatively easy to find one.  Pick just one thing that you can focus on: electricity, heat, water, paying fees to exercise, wasted food, etc.  Pick any one thing where you can reduce your consumption, and go all out!

Cheap and Free Activities that Improve your Mental Health.

Taking care of your mental health, your emotional self, can be difficult, especially in your first year away from home.  You miss home and your parents (even if it’s hard to admit). The lifestyle is different away from home.  The studying is much harder than you expected or have ever experienced.  The level of stress is high, and your parents aren’t in the kitchen, ready to listen to your concerns.  What do you do?

Luckily, most colleges and universities have free help for young people: counselling, health care providers, nurses and physicians ready to listen to you.  But what if simply need a few outlets or escapes from all the noise and the stress?  A Caribbean vacation during Reading Week would be great, but unlikely to ease the financial stress.  Ditto for the posh yoga studios or the personal trainer.  Here are a few budget-friendly ideas to find mental peace and feeling zen.

Seek Nature

Studies have shown that spending time surrounded by nature boosts both mood and self-esteem; exercise surrounded by nature has even more effects and the effects are even more powerful if there is water (a stream, a pond, a lake) in the environment.  Most campus have a few green spots, even downtown.  If you feel that you need to study 24/7, try studying outside when the weather permits it, or make your walk to your building via a wooded area.

Hold a Baby or a Pet

Not that a baby or a pet are equivalent (I do not want to insult any parent here), but the effect of holding a young or vulnerable life in our hands puts us as peace and reminds us of what is important in the grand picture.  Offer to babysit late at night – the baby will most likely sleep a lot, but you’ll get to hold him or her a little too.  Offer to pet sit or just take a dog out for a walk.  You don’t know anyone with a pet? go to a dog park and ask owners if it’s ok to play with their dog. 

Play Music

If you play a musical instrument, make time every week (or every day) to play.  It can be a favorite piece, or a new one you want to work on.  Seeing progress on a new project may lift your spirits when everything else seems to be stalled.

Exercise

You physician will tell you, Public Health Centers will tell you, exercise keeps you healthy physically and mentally.  And it doesn’t have to cost a penny!  If you don’t enjoy the free access to sports facilities where you are, go for a walk, a run outside, work on push-ups or sit-ups, start cycling to school instead of taking the bus, or do yoga with a YouTube video. 

Renew with your Church, Synagogue, Mosque or Temple

You don’t need to be very religious to enjoy a service.  Maybe you grew up going to a weekly religious event ; maybe you’d like to explore your cultural beliefs.  Try it a few times.  If anything, you may feel the peace and the serenity you are looking for.  However, you may find a home away from home, and the strength to rely on a higher power in tough times.

Meditate

Learning to meditate isn’t hard.  What is difficult is to keep the practice going on a regular basis and the discipline to meditate even when we feel to hurried to find the time to meditate, even though it’s when we are rushed that we need meditation the most.

Garden

I never liked gardening; as a child, I did not even play in the sand!  However, buying a few plants and taking care of them has brought me a few bits of inner peace.  Repotting a plant from a small to a larger pot, cleaning up the dead leaves, observing the new leaves and maybe a few flowers open is magical.  In the Spring, I buy a few potted herbs to grow and use over the summer.  I use to have a ‘black’ thumb and now, it’s just dark green… I guess anyone can learn!

As you see, there are many ways to improve your mental health for little or no money.  As students, we often do not see mental health (or decreasing our stress level) as a priority; however, I have seen many students ‘crash’ as they are too stressed, too tired, too bothered by little things.  It IS important to take a few moments once a while to decompress.  You CAN do it without it impacting your budget.  And on a purely financial aspect, feeling blue all the time is not efficient will demotivate you to study, and make you more at risk for failing a class or two.  Therefore, mental distress CAN hurt you financially.

Shopping Is NOT a Hobby

Got a bad grade on an assignment? buy a CD to feel better.  Get a good grade on a lab report? treat yourself to a new sweater.  Having a bad day? a designer coffee will fix everything. 

Is that how you behave? No wonder your finances deserve a D.  Shopping is NOT a hobby, nor is it ‘therapy’ (the myth of ‘retail therapy’ is just that, a myth).  Shopping, when you live on a tight budget, should be only done when items are needed (and the fewer the trips, the more you will save on time; the fewer the trips, the fewer the number of temptations for buying things outside your budget).

If you feel good, find a fun and cheap way to celebrate.  For one thing, you already feel good, so you don’t need anything else to make you feel good.  So enjoy a good book and a break from studying.

If you feel bad, let’s look at the cause and, independently, how to feel better.  I’m not talking about curing clinical depression – that needs much more than a good coffee, or a pep talk.  Depression is a disease, NOT a state of mind that people need to snap out of.  However, if you feel blue, a bit melancholic, it isn’t spending that will make you feel better.  There are several studies that have shown that activities that make us feel valuable are one of the most effective ways to feel good and happy.  I remember, as a grad student, feeling lonely when my boyfriend had to work for weeks at a time at a project out of town, including weekends.  So I found some volunteer work to do, and at the end of my shift, I felt I had made a (small) difference in the world and I went home happy. 

Find your happiness outside the mall.

Can you go TOO cheap?

As a poor student, I once decided to cook everything from scratch.  My reasoning was that I enjoyed cooking (well, baking), and it would save me money, plus I would eat healthier.  I also decided to buy local, in-season, or cheap food.  As a result, I bought cabbage, turnip, dried beans, etc.  You can already see the disaster.  My beans weren’t fully cooked (it takes hours to cook them!), and I never liked cabbage or turnip.  So the result was that I ate out almost every night that week.

Later, a few weeks older and definitely wiser, I bought food I enjoy: eggs, salsa, carrots, lettuce and avocados, tomatoes.  I made tomato sandwiches to take with me to avoid buying lunch, made a great salad to eat with an omelet spiced up with salsa.  Eventually, I learned to make my own salsa (tastes better than stored-bought, but not cheaper since I couldn’t buy tomatoes at a discount price), bought a bread-maker on sale to make my own bread (I still won’t make it completely by hand), and I can make killer salads and my own salad-dressings.  I learned that going too cheap can result in a larger expense to correct the mistake.

One of my friends once bought very cheap bed sheets; after a few washes, they were almost falling apart.  Same for socks, too cheap means holes for your toes.

However, there are some items that you CAN go cheap for, without much or any negative effects:

- Food close to the ‘best before’ date – that is what that date means: BEST before – not unsafe or unhealthy to eat after! As well, you can often freeze the food and eat it later.

- Trendy clothes – especially if it’s an item you know you won’t wear for long

- Formal wear, if you are buying for one event – such as a formal dress/gown

- An item on sale because it’s being discontinued; if it doesn’t work, the warranty should still be valid and the company will replace it with one of equivalent value.

- Decorative items; if their sole purpose is to look good and they won’t be handled much, they should last even if cheap.

What NOT to buy because it’s cheap?

- Anything you do not want or do not need: if you hate pink, do not buy a pink shirt because it’s cheap.

- Anything where you suspect the low price reflects the low quality

- Anything sold ‘as is’ if you are not prepared to fix whatever doesn’t work.

So, is it possible to go too cheap? Absolutely, especially if it will be costly to repair the mistake.  Be wise in your frugalness.

Batch Cooking

Batch cooking means just this: cooking in batches so you don’t have to cook as often because you have large quantities of food prepared.  This is typically a method used by larger families of at least a couple of kids – a parent makes 2 lasagnas at once and freezes one so there is one ready for next week.

However, batch cooking can cook for the single student too.  Say you would like to eat spaghetti; making an elaborate sauce for one serving does not make sense; you cook for 30 min and ‘inhale’ the result in 12 minutes! So you eat the sauce right out of the jar, letting the hot pasta heat up the sauce – yuk!  However, what if you spent 30 minutes making the sauce and had some for 5 extra meals? Now, that’s an interesting idea.

Depending how much you eat, a recipe for 4 or 6 may give you food for only 2-3 meals or for 5-7 meals.  It also depends if you like lots of sides to your meal: do you eat spaghetti with a salad and bread, or just a plate of spaghetti?

Pick something you eat often and you enjoy making: my example is spaghetti (sauce), but it could be something else, as long as it freezes well: Sheppard’s pie; chicken pot pie; quiche; chili; etc.  Instead of making only enough for 1 or 2 meals (or 1 meal with a bit of left over), double your recipe.  Yes, it may take and extra 10% time to cut more vegetables, but compared to making the entire recipe on a different night, it’s a very small amount of time.

Now you have two choices: either you cook the recipe as one (like chili) and save a few portions to freeze for later meals, or you divide the recipe in separate containers and cook separately (like for Sheppard’s pie). Either way, you end up with extra servings ready to freeze and eat on another day.

Now for the freezing part: you will need containers to freeze and a labeling system.  If you are sharing a freezer with others and they like to freeze food too (or keep some vodka in the freezer), you will need to minimize the space you use: square containers take up less space for the same amount of volume.  I like the disposable Ziploc ones (except I don’t dispose of them – I reuse them over and over).  Some people like to spray a light coat of Pam (an oil spray) to create a thin barrier between the food and the container so that the food does not stain the container (tomato sauce of any kind will do that); I don’t care about the stain myself.  Another space-saving method is to buy good quality freezer bag and to freeze the food in these – they can be packed almost flat in the freezer (do NOT try this with cheap sandwich bag – you can imagine the mess when they break).  If you have lots of space, empty 1 liter yogurt containers work very well!

A very important part of this system is labelling: if you don’t label your food, A. someone else may eat it if you share your freezer; B. you will not know what is in the container (chili looks a lot like spaghetti sauce once frozen); C. you may eat someone else’s weird concoction!  What I find works for me is masking tape (not the one from the dollar store though – the good quality stuff from a hardware store), about ¾ inch wide.  If you stick masking tape on a warm and dry plastic lid, it will stay on, even after you freeze the container.  However, do not try to label an already frozen container like this: the humidity on the container and the cold will prevent the glue of the masking tape from working properly.  On the piece of masking tape, I would write my name (if sharing the freezer), the name of the dish, the number of servings (in case I freeze in different quantities), and the date (so I don’t forget about a dish made 6 months ago).

In my kitchen batch cooking, I have found a huge number of dishes that freeze well, and a few that don’t.  For example, soups are great if frozen with the pasta a bit undercooked (you can remove the soup to be frozen from the pot before the soup is ready, and then continue cooking the portion you plan on eating now), but cream soups tend to have the milk separate during the freeze-thaw process (it doesn’t alter the taste, just the texture).  My favorite scone recipe does not freeze well baked, but the raw dough freezes will so I will make twice the recipe (I only thaw a half recipe at the time), form into four dough shapes and bake one and freeze three.  Most of my muffin recipes freeze very well so I will make a double batch (24 muffins), freeze 18 (I can eat 6 muffins in a week), and put a frozen muffin in my lunch bag every day after the first 6 are eaten for breakfast; the muffin thaws between breakfast and lunch and keeps the rest of my lunch cool.

You may wonder why I love batch cooking so much. It’s not the cooking as much as the lack of need to cook on other nights – it’s great to take out spaghetti sauce from the freezer, cook some pasta and TA-DA! Dinner is ready!

The no-spending challenge

Once a while, when I see that I spend too much, I will challenge myself to a zero dollar week.  My challenge is to not spend any money (unless absolutely necessary – like paying for a photocopy) during 7 days (or course feel free to make the challenge longer).

This means no shopping, eating from the cupboard and the fridge, no going out, etc.  I cut down my spending to only essentials for one week. But if I’m doing the challenge for only one week, am I not going to simply delay my spending by a few days and not change anything overall in my annual spending? Actually, no.

This challenge makes me realize that I can live quite well without spending money.  I may have to be a little more creative at finding gifts, going out, eating, and designing outfits from my own closet.  It forces me to enjoy other things than purchasing new items.  This helps me have a mindset of not spending.  If I repeat the challenge every so often, my mindset is geared more and more towards not spending.  After doing the same challenge 4-6 times, I end up not enjoying spending money that much (really; I’ve done it!).

A ban of spending, even temporary, makes me appreciate how much I already have.  I do have food in the pantry and clothes in my closet.  I have activities that I enjoy that do not involve me spending money.  This, again, resets my thoughts towards not spending money.

It is possible that I may need to delay purchases during my no spending challenge week.  A few things can happen with this: 1. I simply purchase the item after my challenge is over; 2. I realize that I don’t need the item and change my mind about purchasing it; or 3, I go back to spending in my original way, but not having a ‘catch up ‘ period for my lack of restaurant meals for a week (i.e., I can go back to restaurant meals twice a week, but I won’t have 4 restaurant meals the week after my challenge to make up for the challenge week).  In two out of three of these options, I end up saving money overall (options 2 and 3). 

You also do not have to do the challenge perfectly: if you are planning on going to the movies on Saturday, you can plan on not spending until Saturday morning.  If not spending for 7 days seem too easy, try 10 or 12 days.  You can also alter the challenge so that it excludes food from the grocery store – especially if you are ‘due’ for grocery shopping.  If you are buying a gourmet coffee and your lunch out every day, a day without spending may be the best way for you to start.

The no-spending week challenge is an effective way to change your view on spending money.

Want vs. Need

Most of us have a huge list of ‘wants’ in our life: new clothing, new electronics, new music and books, new device, new decorating items, going out for dinner, attending a show, having an evening out with friends, etc.  These are all nice ‘extras’ that cost money and are not mandatory for life in college.

One way to trim your spending is to make a list of ‘needs’ for college/university life.  I’m not talking about making it so spartan that you are just sustaining life, but just enough that you manage to go to school, get decent grades (not buying any textbooks or notebooks WILL decrease your grades), and stay healthy.  If you START with that list and move up from there, instead of starting with your wants and trimming down, you will have a much easier time at keeping your spending to a minimum.  So here is a basic list (to which you may need to add a few things depending on your unique situation).

- housing (you can’t be homeless)

- basic furniture: a bed; containers for clothes and such (could be cardboard boxes)

- a fridge and basic cooking appliances (shared – you need to eat and keep food fresh)

- food

- general school supplies: most likely your own computer; textbooks, notebooks and pens;

- access to the internet (does not have to be where you sleep; could be at school only)

-  specialized school supplies for your program: a musical instrument; specific software; a stethoscope; a camera; art supplies; etc.  (you get the picture)

- clothing for the climate (could include rain gear in Vancouver; warm winter jacket and boots in Calgary)

- hygiene supplies (soap, access to a shower, deodorant, etc.)

- transportation to school

- tuition fees and other school fees.

Everything else is extras.  Yes, this is a VERY basic list, but with all of these, you can survive school and get good grades.  Some of these, like food and transportation to school, are regular expenses – the expense keeps coming back.  Some are one-time purchases, like clothing (surely you do not NEED to buy clothes every month) and most school supplies.

If you start here, and add a few things to make your life more enjoyable, your expenses should be trimmed to the minimum.  Choose a hobby that is low-cost: playing freebee in the park or star gazing.  Make social time cheap: go to a free event on campus. Borrow books from the city or school library.

Start with the bare minimum; it will help see what is really important.

Being Thankful

It can be easy to feel resentful during a study semester, especially if you are on a limited budget; other students have more money, a better apartment, go out most nights, etc.  It’s often easy to want to forget the whole ‘frugal’ idea and just blow money and have fun.

Now that the semester is over and that you are surrounded by family more than classmates, take a few minutes to be thankful for the situation you are in.  Specifically, be thankful for:

- a country where if post-secondary education is not free, it is accessible to you

- a country where you live long enough to attend post-secondary education, and that it is available to both women and men, people of all races, and of all sexual orientations

- parents that support you emotionally and financially

- high school teachers that prepared you to succeed in college or university

- knowing that you will be in great financial shape when you finish your studies because of your hard work and knowledge

- new classmates and friends you have made last semester

- being one semester closer to finishing!

Life is good.  Enjoy the holidays.

Reflecting during the holidays

Whether you are religious or not, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the winter break between December and January are a must for all college and university students.  Since you will most likely be free of assignments and studying during at least two weeks, this is a great time to reflect about your successes and your mistakes of the last semester.

Why do this? First, because it is a useful exercise to avoid making more mistakes this upcoming semester, and two, because with your mind free of school stress for a little bit of time, you will be able to calmly analyze your mistakes and your successes.

Spending mistakes: your first step is to write a list of your impulse buys that you later regretted, and their cost.  Add them up and look at the figure so that it sinks in.  Find at least three ways to avoid these impulse spending events so that the mistakes can be avoided more easily; here are some ideas:

      - Never buy anything that is more than $10 without thinking about it for 24 h

      - Use cash only when shopping to avoid going over budget

      - Put spending money in a ziplock bag, put the bag inside a plastic container, fill the container with water, close with lid and freeze.  Only this money can be used for ‘fun’ spending, so the thawing time will ensure you think twice about the purchase.

      - Limit yourself to an allowance for ‘fun’ – say $15 per week; you then have the choice to a burger on Friday night, or wait two weeks and buy a CD.
     
      - Write EVERY purchase down so that you keep track of the running total and be aware of how much you are spending each day, week, and month.

 Second, list all the ways you should have worked better (not more, but better) such as attending all classes and tutorials, working on assignments with a classmates, reading the textbook ahead of time, borrowing an alternate textbook from the library, etc.

Third, list all the ways you saved money last semester: the free pizza at an event you attended, how you split a family size box of cereal with a friend, and how you scored free theatre tickets by volunteering at the opening night.  Add up the amount of money you saved, and vow to do 50% better next semester.

Four, list at least five ways where you can save money this upcoming semester.  This could include:

      - Working on an energy plan with your housemates: decreasing the heat in your home, taking shorter showers, and studying at the library instead of at home (to save on electricity)
      - Buying second-hand textbooks instead of new ones (and selling the old ones),   
      - Using the municipal library to borrow books instead of buying them or downloading them on your e-reader (cheap, but not free)
      - Attending free movie night on campus instead of paying the big bucks to see new releases
      - Having a beer at home before going out to limit bar alcohol purchases
      - Inviting friends over for a BBQ instead of going out on Friday night
      - Attending campus events to reduce the cost of entertainment
      - Traveling by bus instead of taxiing to the local mall

 Five, list at least three personal goals that you want to achieve before the end of the next semester, such as:

      - A fitness goal like a distance to run, a gymnastic move to complete, or a number of push-ups to do in a row
      - A personal knowledge goal like joining the Spanish club to learn a few sentences in Spanish, learning ballroom dancing, or taking a philosophy class or another class outside your major
      - A personal mental health goal like starting to meditate, attending seminars to learn to manage stress better, or talking to a counsellor about your worries and personal conflicts
      - A personal social challenge such as overcoming your shyness at least three times to attend parties or functions you normally would not, or starting a conversation with that attractive classmate of yours.

 

Reflecting is difficult; it means admitting a lot of mistakes, and writing down goals that will make you more successful next semester, but that will also give you more work.  However the satisfaction that you will fee, not only in April, but also in January when you go back to school and you feel a sense of control over your student life is worth the work.  Enjoy the holidays!

Food: homemade vs. premade vs. take-out vs. restaurant

It is so tempting, at the end of a hard day of classes, labs, studying, and perhaps a part-time job, to buy dinner at a take-out place, or to eat out.  You are tired, need to eat, and can’t be bothered with cooking.  I understand, and I feel the same many times.  As well, once a while I would like to be able to eat without having to prepare the meal first and feel like eating out.  However, eating out with my 3 kids, without wine nor dessert, is close to $80! in one night, with nothing to show for it afterwards (except an urge to exercise!!).

After studying varying food prices and quality, both in grocery stores and in restaurants, I found this interesting truth:

For the SAME QUALITY, homemade is cheaper than grocery premade (frozen or not) which is cheaper than take-out which is cheaper than restaurant food.  What this means is that if you want a great pizza meal (with salad and soda), making it at home is cheaper than a frozen one which is cheaper than take out which is cheaper than eating it in a restaurant.  This makes sense considering that in a restaurant there would be a large drink and salad charge; at a take-out place, the drink would come in a bottle and would be cheaper (salad made at home), a really good pizza from a grocery (most likely frozen) would be cheaper still, but making your own with pita, English muffin, or bread dough, and canned spaghetti sauce is still cheaper (and a large soda bottle at the grocery store is about $1 if you buy no-name). 

Notice that I talk about same quality meal – this is because, in the example of a pizza, the amount of chicken, say, on a frozen pizza is so small that if you were to make a chicken pizza at home, it’s likely you would put more chicken on it, driving the price up.  Yes, frozen pizzas are practical and they taste good, but in terms of quality of food, don’t count the few morsels of sweet peppers as a serving of vegetables.  Basically, you can make a much healthier meal at home for the same price (or the same meal for much less).

So let’s say you want a meal of salmon, asparagus and rice.  In a restaurant, that’s at least $22 plus drinks, taxes, and tip (plus the drive there and back).  At home, you can buy a serving of salmon (frozen) for less than $5; rice is pennies, and asparagus is about $2 a bunch (for a person).  That’s no more than $8 plus drinks, taxes (there is some tax at the grocery store) and yes, you have to go to the grocery store to buy these, but chances are you buy groceries only once a week, not every time you want to eat.  Drinks will be cheaper at home, and so will dessert.  If you did take out, you would not purchase the drink(s) and you wouldn’t have the tip to pay either (assuming the meal is the same price; often take-out is cheaper because you aren’t taking up space in their restaurant and they do not have to pay a waitress to serve you).

Finally, there’s one thing I often ask myself before I go out to eat: I first evaluate the price of the meal (roughly) and ask myself what else I could buy with that money, something I would enjoy for longer than the duration of the meal: a book? a CD? a new shirt? it’s very seldom that a meal out seems the best value for me.  Bon appétit!

Why be frugal? Motivation

After weeks and maybe months of being frugal, we often want to give up and live the life we see others living.  Being frugal can be hard – especially if everyone else ‘seems’ to be having more fun because they are spending more.  So how do we stay motivated? a few ways…

- First of all, be realistic about your classmates and other students; you may think they are spending lots of money, but it’s possible they are raking high credit card debts or that their parents have lots of funds for them.  It’s also possible that they spend less on something you spend more on (maybe some other students have free textbooks from big brother or sister, or they have very low cost traveling back home).  Regardless, remember that you should be happy with what you have because you are content, not because others have more or less than you.

- Keep in mind your ultimate goal: being debt-free (or close to) after you graduate is the best reward you can image – yes, it may be 3 or 4 years away, but imagine the reverse situation: you finally get to work full-time with a decent entry-level salary, but you need to spend $400-$800 per month on debt repayment.  That monthly payment could be going to a great retirement fund, new furniture, a down payment on a house, a car or an apartment you don’t need to share.  But instead, you need to make student loan payments. The problem with spending money you don’t have yet, is that there is no guarantee of how easy it will be to repay – first, there will be some interest to pay on the loan, and second, if you can’t find a good paying job, paying your debt may take a huge chunk of your take home dollars.

- Reward yourself once in a while – and make sure it does not involve a huge amount of money (like the person on a diet rewarding herself with a huge piece of cake!): go out with friends once a month; buy a book at a second-hand store; buy one fancy coffee. 

- Dream a little: Write down your financial goals and put pictures up of the first luxury items you will buy once you graduate and have a good job: a cashmere sweater; an espresso machine; tickets to a musical.  Put this up in front of your desk or where you put down your purse or wallet at the end of the day to remind yourself constantly of why you are being frugal.

- Find a friend who is also cash-strapped and commiserate together – it will seem less hard if you don’t feel that you are ‘the only one on campus who does spend reading week on a resort’.  Laugh quietly at the fashion-slaves surrounding you (in a nice way, just to vent), and feel re-energized in your pursuit of a frugal degree.

- Give yourself a challenge – a no spending day (not a penny comes out of your wallet or your credit/debit card today) or a no grocery day – all your food comes from your home, no grocery shopping. 

For me, one of my motivations is my go-to book.  It’s the book I read when I get discouraged about stuff, financial or other, when I think I just can’t handle things right now.  My go-to book is a biography of a mom raising 3 daughters and a son, one of the daughters having cerebral palsy at a time when disabled kids were placed in an institution and forgotten about. I only need to read one chapter of that book to feel that if this woman could do with so little, I could certainly manage with what I have.  Find an uplifting book or song that gives you the drive, the courage and the perseverance to continue.

Perseverance is the key here – an extra day without shopping, an extra day without gourmet coffee, it all adds up.  Do not give up, and if you ‘lapse’ sometimes (we all do), it’s just extra motivation to keep on going.