Learning to live frugally one day at a time

After a recent trip to California, Michael and I decided that some day in the not so distant future we'd like to live by the beach. While we were there we devised a plan to live more frugally. The main goal of our plan is to of course build a nest egg in order to accomplish our goal, but it doesn't stop there. Hopefully through this effort we will learn to spend wisely and live below our means without sacrificing quality of life, find more ways to enjoy life and be appreciative of what we have.

I thought this warranted a special category in my blog called "Frugal Living". I want to document the journey so that others trying to do the same thing might find something useful here or at least know that there are others going through the pains of learning to live frugally. We enjoy eating out daily, going to the movies, making sure we have the latest and greatest in electronic gadgets, and forgetting to save for a rainy day. I am ashamed to admit that I have no idea what a good price is on meat, milk or eggs...if we need it we get it. I am thankful that we are in a position to be this way and at the same time I am regretful that at our ages we are not where I think we should be financially.

This goal falls right in line with wanting to simplify our life and our home. I have done a LOT of de-cluttering over the past 2 years but for all the stuff we manage to discard or pass on, new items come into the house. Those new items often times provide us with immediate gratification but in the end it continues to add to the clutter and stunt the growth of our nest egg. In hindsight a lot of those items shouldn't have been bought at all. This became very apparent at the beginning of August when we moved very quickly. You don't realize how much crap you have until you have to move. When the next move comes up I hope to be moving much less than we did this time around.

Living frugally sounds so exciting when you read what others have done on the internet, for many of them it appears that it's better than sliced bread! I have to grow and learn that frugal doesn't equal deprivation, it shouldn't anyway. It should not change my quality of life, it should only change the things that I find important, comforting and fun. So as time goes on hopefully those changes will happen for me. Of course like anything else it takes time.