Why Frugal Living = Happiness

When most people think about frugal living, all sorts of negative connotations spring to mind…deprivation, misery, and stinginess might be just a few. I’ve even had people look at my lifestyle and say, “I would never want to live like her!”

Maybe I’m an odd duck, but a money-saving lifestyle has always seemed like a positive thing to me and I wouldn’t want to live any other way.

Here are a few reasons that frugal living=happiness for our family.

• We don’t have consumer debt. Books could be written about how wonderful this is.
• We have an emergency fund, which gives us great peace of mind, especially in a shaky economy.
• We are able to routinely save money for expenses like vacation, Christmas, and birthdays.
• We have money in the bank for car repairs and home repairs. That’s more peace of mind!
• My husband doesn’t have to work long hours to support us, and I can work part-time from home.
• Because we don’t buy a lot, we don’t have an overload of STUFF taking up our house.
• We have a wide variety of delicious meals. Food cooked from scratch is not only cheaper, but tastier.
• Since we don’t live paycheck to paycheck, we don’t have to stress about paying our bills, and we don’t have to pay late.
• Because I obtain gently used clothes, we have nice, high-quality wardrobes (better than we’d be able to buy new!), though we spend very little on clothing.

I suppose some people might prefer living paycheck to paycheck, up to their eyeballs in debt, but to me, no consumer goods in the world are worth trading for the peace of mind (and yes, even happiness) I get from frugal living.

photo credit
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Kristen blogs about saving money cheerfully at The Frugal Girl. In addition to being a life-long devotee of frugality, she’s a photography nut, a baker, a homeschooler, a musician, and more importantly, a wife and mom.