How Has the Recession Made You More Frugal?

I know I’ve talked about this a lot, but it really fascinates me how people can really adapt to new situations quickly, and how the mass mentality of society is related to what is going on in the media and around them. I’m no different, trust me. Ever since the recession reared it’s ugly head in it’s most obvious state, sending the stock market crashing down the new lows in 2008, and it seemed like the proverbial sky was falling, I’ve been much more frugal in pretty much every aspect of my fiscal life.

It doesn’t take much for me to hunker down and become a minimalist. The reason for my innate frugality is coming from a childhood where money was often the topic of fights and tension in our household, and we just didn’t have a lot of money to throw around when my mom and dad divorced one another. It has always been my fear that I will live a life where I am stressed out constantly about bills and money, and I never wanted that for myself or my husband.

I think that this overriding fear has also been one of the reasons (among several other private ones) that my husband and I are most likely not going to have children. We haven’t made the decision completely yet, but it’s been discussed, and we have so many other aspirations and goals, and we are both hard workers and have side projects besides our dayjobs. For us, I think that we are just better off personally not doing it, and yes, finances have been part of the reason for the decision.

We stopped going out to eat all the time, cold turkey. We cook inexpensive meals almost every night at home. And if we do go out to eat, it’s not at a sit down restaurant where you have to leave a tip, but it’s usually take out or fast food. This is much more economical, and we rarely even do that any more.

I started clipping coupons for grocery shopping, and virtually stopped going to shop for anything other than groceries like clothes or makeup, unless I really needed something. We have become really conscious of keeping the utility bills low by watching the heat levels in the winter so our gas bill will be lower, to making sure all lights are off when we’re not using them in the house.

We started doing some of our grocery shopping at Wal-mart because a lot of the foods we buy are there cheaper, and we also go for the brands that are on sale when shopping, rather than our “favorite” brand (unless it’s a really loyal brand name that I like).