Frugaling

Frugality requires a deep look into what motivates spending and how you can better budget for the future. Today, I wanted to highlight five of the most popular articles on Frugaling.org that will help you reduce your spending and give you inspiration for change. These reads go beyond simple “how to make a budget” articles. My goal with this site and these specific articles was to touch a deeper nerve – getting at the crux for why we spend too much. It’s time for a better, frugal future.

1. Time, Frugality, And Learning To Say No

Maybe you’re struggling to find time in your life – busy with the almost endless to-do lists, homework, chores, etc. Sometimes we take on too much, signup for more activities than we can handle, and work creeps into our personal lives. This is a recipe for disaster. It’s time to take back the reins and learn to say one simple word we learned as children, “No!”

Learning To Say No.

2. 10 Takeaways From A Spending Cleanse

After countless weeks of trying to curtail my spending, I wondered what a week off would look like. Could I make it an entire week without spending a dime? Turned out I could! The following article is a collection of the ten powerful takeaways from a week away from money.

A Spending Cleanse.

3. Friends Make Friendly Budgets

Sometimes you realize that your psychological well-being and health is affecting your spending. In fact, if you feel isolated, removed, and depressed, you expect to spend far more of your disposable income. Learn how your mental health equals more or less to your bottom line.

Friendly Budgets.

4. Need For Spend: The Secret To Stop Shopping

There’s a public secret – is that possible? – that exists to reduce your need to spend. Almost every town, big and small, features this public option that will fill your need to shop around without spending a dime. In this article, I explain how you can use your local library to get the latest digital books, magazines, movies, and more!

Stop Shopping.

5. Save Money With Mindfulness

Lastly, here’s an article about learning to develop a peace with your desires. The latest and greatest new technology may beckon for your checkbook. Just think, the new, iPhone 5S just arrived! Wouldn’t life be grand if you owned one? With mindfulness meditation and close scrutiny of your wants, you can find a peace to begin your frugal journey. Just breathe.

Money Mindfulness.

Think about your answer to that question. What do you carry every day? Do you put your hands in your pockets and tell me that you have a wallet, phone, and keys? Maybe you’re a student and you think about your backpack – its books, binders, spiral notebooks, and more. 

Figure-Ground Perception

These physical objects carry a weight; they follow us, contained within pockets, bags, and purses. We can feel them throughout our day, if we are mindful. Unfortunately, if you only responded to the physical, you’d be answering the wrong question – especially if you care to be frugal.

Psychological textbooks love to talk about the image in the top-right. Why? Because it’s a trick of the mind. Your vision tends to process either the figure or ground. Do you see the two faces? Or, do you see a vase? Depends on your vision! This rule is aptly named: figure-ground perception.

Apply it to your life and ask yourself, are you focused on what’s physically or emotionally weighing you down?

Testing Frugality’s Limits

I created this site in early May of this year. Born of a growing dissatisfaction with my debt and an aim to right my course, I decided to start my journey back to zero. But despite starting this site and having a clear goal, staying frugal has been difficult.

There are plenty of excuses I’ve used: I’m a long-distance relationship, a graduate student, young and social, and the list goes on an on. What I’m saying, emotionally and mentally, is that I deserve to spend more than I make. At times, it can be difficult to fight the urge to spend unnecessarily or more than I have to. There are competing desires.

As my inner voice shows, if you’re just joining the frugal journey, you’re in for one helluva ride. Psychologically, your biggest test will be seeing what triggers your response to spend. How can you stay focused in your life, reduce your spending, and enjoy your life more? It sounds like a bad sales pitch, but that’s really the goal. How do you find that?

Reduce, Reuse, Reframe

For me, it all goes back to my emotional well-being. If, on the inside, I feel happy, positive, and strong, it’s relatively easy to overcome spending pitfalls. Sometimes I crack and feel like I deserve to have something. My shoes have pretty serious wear in them, but they still work. Do I deserve to have a new pair?

I’ve chosen to reframe these difficult tests: I deserve to be debt-free by working hard to overcome this. While simple to understand, it’s hard to begin to believe. I do deserve to be debt-free, but that’s only if I work through my psychological barriers that cause me to spend beyond my budget.

Today, I happened to fall down a brief rabbit hole of social media and networking. A friend’s Facebook wall had a video about a man that gives without expectation. It’s touching, moving, and heartfelt; albeit, at the end, you realize it’s an advertisement. Nonetheless, the theme is true and video is powerful. What can you give?

DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), DRM (Digital Rights Management), and restrictive publication rights hurt everyone. The old guard, represented by companies like the RIAA and MPAA, believe that an artist’s profits are contained within a deeply policed realm. For years, we sat through momentary pauses at the beginning of video games, TV shows, and movies, while they advertise severe threats of financial harm via the FBI. Atmospheric numbers flashed and danced – jail time and a $250,000 fine may follow suit. With the industry’s sordid past, I wanted to take moment to explain why I’m choosing Creative Commons (CC).

What Is It?

Creative Commons is not about giving up your rights. As the creator of some art (motion, text, etc.), you hold the copyright for such documents. So how does CC fit in the picture?

CC sets an organized framework for others to use your material. If you believe that traditional copyright laws have hindered the distribution and modification of art, then this is for you.

Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. (CC)

This flexibility will enable art and authoring to become a collaborative, building experience. CC is a non-profit organization tasked with maintaining the licenses and offering easy tools for others who want to join in and share.

I decided to make the plunge after reading the infamous editor of BoingBoing.net, Cory Doctorow, hailed the virtues of a Creative Commons license for major publications.

There’s no way to stop it, and the people who try end up doing more harm than piracy ever did. The record industry’s ridiculous holy war against file-sharers (more than 20,000 music fans sued and counting!) exemplifies the absurdity of trying to get the food-coloring out of the swimming pool. If the choice is between allowing copying or being a frothing bully lashing out at anything he can reach, I choose the former. (Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother)

Won’t You Lose Money?

Major corporations with multi-million dollar lobbying arms have long wanted to tamp down on piracy and sharing. The argument has been that copyright violations lead to less money in the coffers of big business.

A range of evidence suggests that piracy doesn’t hurt box office or overall earnings for the movie industry. In fact, in 2012, Hollywood set a box office record of more than $10 billion. Likewise, increasing evidence suggests that the largest pirates also fund the industry best. These are real fans. They go to live concerts, buy special packages, memorabilia, and go to events.

Is it possible I’ll lose money by allowing people to copy my work? Possibly, but I’m honored that somebody would’ve found something of interest to graft it from this site. If it helps others, why keep it locked down? The more people that are reached, helped, and find a ground to begin working on their finances, the better.

How Can I Try It?

At the bottom of my site, in the footer section, you’ll find a small logo for Creative Commons. If you click this small copyright notice, you’ll see that I allow the sharing (copying and distribution) and remix of my work on this site.

CC has one of the easiest ways to choose your copyright laws. Allow modifications? Allow commercial use? License jurisdiction? Then, select your license. The entire process takes less than two minutes.

This is a new direction for me. All I ask is that you think about trying it and give credit where credit is due.