When living frugally and within your means, the opinions of friends and neighbors often are far more difficult to resist than any ad. My family has had to endure more ridicule than I care to relate because we have chosen, over the years, to keep our expenses low. I do not regret our choices, but the ridicule hurts none-the-less. We bought a small house when everyone else was going bigger. We bought small used cars and maintained them until they died. We only bought new when health dictated (i.e. underwear and shoes), or when needed and not available on consignment. We were a Craig’s List family before Craig’s List even existed. Close attention to style trends has clothed my children smartly, yet I have seen far too often children who left home happy and proud of the clothes they wore come home in tears. The reason? My children were ridiculed, not for the clothes and how they looked, but for where they were purchased. In other words, the usual gathering to admire the new clothes turned quickly to ridicule only after my children truthfully answered the question,” Where did you get them?” I know the feeling well because adults are no kinder; they just choose their words more craftily and talk more behind your back. Please seek to be aware of this “peer pressure” as you work to adjust your expenses. When you look for it, it is amazing to realize how much it really does affect our choices and perception of need.

Go out to dinner 5x less in a month.   You will save 150-200/month.  Funny how the bill for a meal goes up with a couple of beers or drinks.

Do Not follow your neighbor's advice or the financial experts who told everyone to use an equity loan on the house to finance a new  Lexus and pay down credit cards. If you did this, and lost the house, you fooled yourself. A"fool and their money are soon parted".  Never make the same financial mistake twice, save money.

We live in a society that largely values the appearance of frivolous wealth; having so much money you can afford to just throw it away on fancy and fad. This results in buying houses that we can barely afford in the best of times, cars that cost more than houses used to, and clothing that has more value in the tag and the store it hung in than in the clothing itself. It is sad to say, but this is the real reason that the middle class is hurting so much today.  Our maxed out budgets have made us feel like we are constantly pinching pennies to pay the bills. We had a growing economy, a big new house, a big new car, and still felt poor. Yet, we were so confident in the continued increase of Wall Street and Real estate, that we mortgaged our future to keep up with the Jones today, and the Jones have done the same. It did not take much of a dip in the economy to start our house of cards falling all around us. Then the domino effect brought our economy to its knees. Now the middle class, and our country, is feeling desperate because our budgets are based on the best of times and we can no longer support that level of expense. We really have no one to blame but ourselves; though we eagerly point the finger elsewhere. We simply forgot the wisdom of our forefathers. Let's see how did it go? "A penny saved is a penny earned." Yes, that would be a good start.

Simple advice: buy it ONLY if you have the money in your pocket, meaning, you already have the cash to pay for it. Otherwise, just leave it alone. You'll be o.k.without it, you'll realize later...

Some ways to save on food cost......When a recipe calls on a pound of ground beef use only 3/4's of a pound - you won't miss having less meat in your pasta sauce or chili. Use less shredded cheese than a recipe calls for - you won't miss the extra fat and calories!   When you make a meal double the recipe and freeze half for another meal.  Eat more beans.  

When baking cookies and cakes use 1/3 less sugar but don't adjust the fat content though with cakes you could adjust the fat by using applesauce.  These are just a few things I do to cook more healthy and economically.

My husband and I have done exceptionally well by starting our lives together living "like we were still in college".   Actually, we did upgrade our lives quite a bit - probably living on double what we did in college.  So it did feel like an upgrade & was liberating - but to a limited extent.  We also waited a long time to have kids, a decision that was not financially driven, but nonetheless enabled us to keep our expenditures much lower for the first decade of our marriage.  After that, we were able to save enough to buy a home with 10% down within a year of graduation from college, pay off said house within 7 years of the purchase (thank God we did that instead of piling our earnings into the developing dot com bubble!), and have a seven-figure investment account with relatively conservative investments a few years before turning 40.  Now we are much more spendy than we were before, but we increased our unnecessary expenditures at a much slower pace than many of our peers.  

Most people, obviously, cannot implement this now if they already have high fixed expenses.  But how about living like you do not receive those raises and bonuses?  Over the years, those 5% salary increases will really compound, and other than a bit of periodic belt tightening due to inflation, you will not have had to do the unsustainable budget tracking and extreme self-denial that so many are advocating today.

I make nearly 100,000 a year and still live in the same house that I bought 22 years ago when I made $26,000 a year. When I moved into higher paying jobs, I saved the difference between what I made at the old job and the new.  I have no credit card debt or car notes. As a result, I have savings and investments that are serving me very well during these  uncertain economic times.  Maybe people will begin to return to the old fashioned values of saving and living within their means.

Delete your Starbucks habit. Save approximately $120.00 monthly.

Dump the status symbols. The SUVs are nothing but glorified station wagons, many lack the 4wd that makes then sport utility anyway. I drive a 40 year old real VW which I can get parts for easily and maintain and repair it myself. I ride my mountain bike to run most errands and stay healthy and I prefer to take the bus and streetcar when possible to save both money and the stress of driving and wear and tear on my car.

I also dont know why anyone who can get all the local channels with rabbit ears subscribes to cable TV or satellite TV. I  buy good and often hardly used records, tapes and videos of movies at yard sales for a quarter.

I also am not causing more overpopulation because I didnt breed children which are usually the biggest expense.

I  cook my own meals at home from nearly scratch, pack my own lunch for work and avoid the often dirty upscale restaurants and the chemi-burgers of hamburger stands.

I also vote against special interests including bonds, California's Prop. 8, etc.

I also vote in favor of propositions that benefit the entire public like transportation, clean farms like California's 2, etc.