To each his own. Me, I exercise extreme frugality (as a solitary little retired senior on an extreme budget) to afford my annual trips (budget!) to Europe.  Makes everything worthwhile to me! Meanwhile, my conscience over the environment  rests easy...

I save money by never buying newspapers or magazines.  I read the news on the Net and get books, magazines, CDs and DVDs at the library.  I use a drying rack for drying clothes and plan to put up a clothes line again.  My garden plants are from seed or from friend's gardens.  I eat lots of beans.  I carry my own water bottle.  I make new potholders out of old mattress pads and cloth scraps like quilts.  I have a compost pile.  I walk and lift free weights for exercise.  I cut my own hair.  There are many cheap shampoos and cosmetics that are just fine.  I wear sweaters in the winter and cool woven shirts in the summer.  I am a nurse who wears scrubs furnished by the hospital so my clothing budget is zero.  I love being frugal.  It is a game.

WD:  If being frugal is so rediculous, why are you reading such "nonsense" and "wasting" your precious college educated time posting about it?

WD:

So you went to college. So did most of us and some even have advanced degrees, as do I.  However, a few bouts of cancer surgery and treatment cleaning out the old bank account makes extreme frugality necessary. I once threw away more each month than I now earn. Necessary frugality has given me a deep appreciation for the luxuries I once took for granted.  The beauty of it is, I am ashamed of my past wastefulness but proud of how I manage now.  If I could go back to earning six figures, I certainly would.  But I will never again deliberately waste, discard, or feel inadequate for washing out a baggie, slitting open an empty toothpaste container, or any of the multitude of frugal things I do now. I'm a better person for it. You might consider a few modifications to your attitude.  Be well.

Reframe the idea of saving pennies and think of being frugal as saving life energy. Life energy is what it takes to work and make money. Time is irreplacable. Time is energy. Time is money.

Being frugal makes penny cents and common sense.

If you threw away ten cents (and ONLY ten cents -- I bet the average person wastes a lot more) worth of stuff every day, it would be $36 a year.  In my case, that's nearly a set of Brahms sonatas or two-thirds of a way to a new set of strings, which to me is definitely not insignificant and a lot more appealing than using it to buy something as mundane as shampoo.  When I put it that way, does it make more sense?

Hyper-mileing does not require you to do anything dangerous, or damage any parts of the car unless you are doing things like running the car in neutral at highway speeds - and that will only affect cars with specific types of transmissions.

I drive a Ford Taurus that under the new calculations should get a maximum of 25mpg on the highway.  By using some simply hyper-mileing techniques, I regularly get about 29.5mpg on the highway.  I do this by using the cruise control, never exceeding 60mph (optimal fuel efficiency speed on my Taurus is 58mph), and coasting to stops when getting to an exit.  

Those few simple changes have saved me between $120 and $150 a month.

 I have to say that I'm frugal but not cheap.  There is a difference.  Being cheap would be washing out sandwich bags and using teabags over and over.  Being frugal would be to buy the tea and platic bags at good price and throwing them out after they've been USED.  

I have a CHEAP family member who actually washes aluminum foil to use again.  They also use teabags 3 or 4 times   Give me a break!!!  

It all comes down to making choices which are right for you and your monetary situation. Everybody has things which they want to be able to afford and are willing to make frugal tradeoffs. Re-using a bag or getting a box of bags cheaply are different issues entirely. Re-using is environmentally friendly as well as frugal. As for the college educated scoffer...many educated people make silly choices and many uneducated people could us all a thing or two about raising a family on a shoestring and dime and still getting their kids to college. Spending too much on ordinary things is wasteful of your life's energy which is MORE valuable than money...you can always make more money...try to add a few days to the year.

I love the old saying, "Waste not, want not."  This obviously refers to ALL items.  Wasting a drop of shampoo or toothpaste as some of you have stated, is actually the same as finding a nickle on the ground and throwing it away because it isn't a dollar.  Don't those nickels still come together to form a dollar, then why is it so insane to save those little nickel and dime items?  My husband and I don't  HAVE to be ultra frugal but we do it because we actually enjoy knowing we are saving, it feels good!