What is the hardest frugal thing to do, for you?

[TheRootedNomad]

I know I posted to this last night but now it appears to be gone....oh well, here it is again.


Of a very sspecific nature ... hanging laundry instead of useing my dryer. Sometimes I do hang it but mostly I don't.

On a larger more generalized scale the nickle and dime stuff. When there is money to be nickled and dimed it becomes very hard for me to control the leaks in the budget. I struggle with plugging them up.

[nandmsmom]

My biggest thing is going out to eat. I can handle the rest, but I love to go to restaurants.

[PrairieRose]

Stopping my own shopping for entertainment habit and getting Gripey onboard. The last one took the longest but now he's more focused than I am.......

[Jellybeanz]

The hardest part for me is sticking to a budget when I'm the only one "onboard" with it. My husband agrees in theory we need to but every week he's got something he just has to have.Well I'm not his Mommy ya know? I can say no we don't need to do that, it's out of the budget but he just gets mads and pouts and does it behind me back. And his wants are bigger things , not like five or ten dollars.

I can't change him, I've learned that, so I guess the hardest thing is to keep budget without any cooperation /teamwork.

Based on our situation, I decided paying myself first ( saving a little each check) is the only way I am ever going to get ahead in the long run. That gives me some degree of sanity. But I don't know how long I can keep doing that if things keep going up.. the amount seems to be shrinking every month lately!

This is why I posted in another thread that I got my home phone disconnected! To make up for the shrinking dollars. :-)

[C@rol]

Mine is sometimes impulse buying and staying out of the grocery store. I can never, ever go in and come out with the one or two items I intended to purchase. It's still an ongoing battle.

Budgetwise we're okay, it's just the few extra dollars we would save on the impulse buying that grabs me.

[Ceashels]

Lately mine has been eating out or having food delivered. I've been sick enough that when I get home from work, I crash. I've been able to get maybe 2-3 meals cooked each week and thankfully I had things that were preprepped in the freezer. Today is the first day in a month that I was able to pack DH a lunch. yay! I'm on the road to recovery.

[della92]

1-eating out-I have a small budget for eating out now, but how I love to go to dinner on Friday night and have breakfast on Sat or Sun morning. But I am getting much better, I keep telling myself, well if I spend more on eating out then I'll have less in savings for other stuff.

2-When special occasions come up, I tend to go to the store and buy a new outfit or special gifts, of which was not budgeted for, this one is the big one!

[FrugalMomof3]

I think for me it would be my flea market shopping even though I budget for it, I just cant resist BUT I can say that lately I dont just buy something at a flea market on impulse or the "wants" but I actually think about do I need this and where would this go?

I also dont hang laundry outside like I want to or should...but tomorrow it's going to hits in mid 90's so I think my clothesline will be in use for sure.

[Ebbie]

Well I've been wracking my brain and in honesty I don't find any of it terribly hard. There are a couple of things I just could never stick with, but I don't really consider them failures. I never could stick with a price book, although I know it's a good way to keep track of what groceries cost. And I could never keep a running cost of every dollar I was spending (I did it for 3 months once, and that was it). I found those two things hard, so I stopped doing them, but I'm still frugal and it's still "working" for me. Everything else that I *am* doing hasn't been hard to do, if that makes sense.

[forHISglory]

For the most part, I've always been frugal so there was not much in the way of mourning the passing of unfrugal ways.

But a few things were definitely more difficult. I hate to be the policeman in the family. Hubby shares most of the same goals and dreams and that helps. But at times I am the one who has to say NO to some spending. That's an uncomfortable role to play.

Going out to eat and trying new foods is a pleasure for me. Growing up it was a rarity, but once on my own, I indulged. Then as I tightened the frugal belt, I cut out restaurants. We still eat out a bit; it's not like we never do this, but I could easily slip back into the old ways if we had more money.

I keep thinking I should try to do without air conditioning. After all, we didn't have it when I grew up and didn't have it for half of our married life. We keep our central air set on 78. While I would like it cooler, Hubby likes this temp, and it helps hold the humidity down in the house.

Otherwise my frugal lifestyle is not really a burden. I'm pretty easily pleased and satisfied.

[Hamada]

I keep a running spreadsheet on how much I spend. Sometimes it gets difficult around the end of the month to say no more spending until the next month. Most of the time though I really do not feel deprived. Although with the cost of everything going up I am not very happy thinking I will need to spend more on groceries.

[cab54]

Impulse buying (which racks up an enormous amt. of clutter, also).

[urbanfarmer]

Trying to feed us these days has become a real chore.

The impulse not use a CC for gas when we need to be paying on the balances.

[Starlight9803]

Two things. Impluse buying and trying to get dh to see the situation even a little bit. Hes better then he was but not where I want him to be, which I dont think he will ever be. Its just not in his nature

This is my situation exactly. Impulse buying was very hard to give up, especially since my impulse purchases were always those "just a couple dollar" type things. I had to look at the big picture to realize how that really added up. My DH, while he is getting better too, likes instant gratification a little too much for him to ever be as frugal as I try to be.

[Dobby]

I have trouble with two things...impulse shopping online (I don't do too badly, but still), and not counting extras into my budget, such as birthday gifts for my daughter's friends.