Common "Necessities" That Frugal People Don't Buy

I've never met anybody who didn't own one do you still live in the 1990s nope frugal people just don't buy that if you've ever had a conversation like that even a casual conversation say at work or at the school PTA or at a business event or even Church you are probably a Frugal person and you just reveal that you don't own or have something that everyone else has we thought it'd be really fun to talk about things that everyone else seems to consider to be a necessity that frugal people just don't buy now we've made our own list and as we go through the video we want you to vote in the comments section necessity or nope not a necessity if you don't know us I'm Larry and I'm hope and we're from under the median where every week we bring you videos on practical frugality let's get started item number one that everyone else seems to consider a necessity but people just don't buy it that is brand new clothing not only do we go to thrift stores and garage sales and church rumage sales we kind of brag about it I I had a winter coat everybody like raved over and I was like $2 Church rumage sale do y'all do that I mean it's it's not that I'm super prideful that I don't spend very much money on clothing but I think it is really cool when you go someplace and you find something that is virtually brand new that is name brand that somebody else bought and hardly ever wore and they donated and you buy it for like you know 85% less than they paid for it there's something just very gratifying to The Frugal Soul about being able to do that I have a comment on brand new brand new just the brand new okay comment on brand new it's only brand new the first time you wear it okay that's it first time you wear it it's brand new after that it's used clothing so you know why bother second thing necessity or not necessity disposable bottles of water we we have to just put this out there because we' like to be really honest we have a couple of cases of those little water bottles we we keep them in the garage every once in a while look if you are sending a child on a school field trip you are not going to send your name brand kind of expensive refillable water bottle with them because let's just face it kids aren't real good at remembering where they set things down I have lost so many water bottles that way even when my kids were at College they're like you know that water bottle you gave me no idea where it's at I'm like oh my gosh really so I kind of stopped doing it so I mean we don't go through them very much but we do do have a few of them on hand we get them when they go on sale though I will say like we wait for a really great sale on a case of bottled water and we pay like I don't know between $2 and $3 for a case of bottled water we get a couple of them we set them in the garage and we use them really slowly that's that makes a case for bottled water but as a whole we really really like the highend water bottles especially for us oh yeah like when we're exercising in the summer and I'm walking and he's riding his bike and it's hot out outside you're definitely going to find us toting a disposable or not a disposable a a refillable water bottle ones that keep stuff cold really really long time I got to say in regard to biking and walking in hot weather hope and I went out today it was 40° cold with a 26 M hour wind gust coming out of the Northwest and we we got out in that I rode 10 miles she walked what 1.8 miles no it wasn't even that it wasn't I got it like I no okay true it was like 1.38 miles it was hardly even an honest effort and he told me he said go north from our house because the wind will be at your back well you know what happened when I turned around when you turn around I was freezing I felt like I was an Eskimo I was dying and I was walking home thinking I'm not going to make it I was so cold but we still went out and did it warm warm weather is coming people it's coming we prefer warm weather trust me all right next thing to vote on is I'm going turn this over new cars all right everybody repeat after Us cars go down in value not up in value they depreciate the minute you drive them off the lot it's a lot to pay for a used for a new car smell honestly they detail used cars around here pretty well though they smell almost like that brand new smell well they have a spray can that smells like new car are you serious is that called in the car yeah they they can actually duplicate that smell in your car but we're paying thousands and thousands less than that new car smell with that new car they go down and value look unless you have a car that they made like 20 of like a citen DS That's a classic car there you go now now that's going up in value as we go on but the cars that you drive on the road typically are going to go down in value in fact they're going to go down big time the first 20 minutes you have that car on your driveway all right used car new cars vote new car necessity or absolutely not I like to say something about new car go ahead new car it's only new for about 20 minutes while it's in your driveway I'm sorry he's doing a lot of this today a lot you're going to see a lot of air quotes in this video guys my point is even if you buy something brand new it doesn't stay new that long it's used in a very short order expensive cell phone plans all right this this is our Soap Box we are getting up on mhm we paid a lot of money for a long time for a cell phone plan and then we discovered mint mobile y'all you know you've heard us say before we really really love mmobile and it's a good thing we like to talk about mmobile because they are our partner for this video guys guys have you ever sat down at night and thought why is my Wireless plan so unbelievably high that happened to us probably two years ago we sat down and we looked at each other after paying the cell phone plan yet another month and said why is this so high is there anything else available that's when we started looking around and we found mint mobile we realized that there were three things that were really important to us in a cell phone plant we wanted great coverage me mobile has the largest 5G Network in the nation we wanted unlimited talk and text because y'all know I like to talk so I got to keep in touch with pretty much everybody we also wanted this was super important to us because this was our scary point we wanted something that would be super easy to switch to took us 15 minutes to switch to Mint mobile and yes we did get to keep our previous cell phone numbers we used eim which most phones I think have that capability now but if you have a cell phone and it doesn't our kids didn't have that capability on their cell phone so they had met mobile send them a physical SIM card in the mail for free on one more thing of course because this is a fality channel the price made us super duper happy we pay $15 a month for our monthly plan with mintmobile but the good news is right now new customers can pay $15 a month for any of mint's plans when they purchase three months or more and this includes the unlimited plan which is normally $30 a month for more information use our special link for underthe median viewers it's right down there it is mmo.it us there on the screen you can also scan that QR code or you can scroll right to the top of this video where you'll also find a link mmobile guys go check them out frugal people don't buy the newest generation of any phone or pretty much any Electronics in general I usually wait until something will go way down in price before I purchase it then I buy it at a pretty good price it's still going to be just as good even if it's a couple Generations old remember that was brand new at one time and was the latest technology available it's still good it still works it still does all that you need it to do for a lot less money you know I think you said it it does what you need it to do and I think that's what you have to figure out before you go shopping what what are my needs you don't necessarily need all the bells and whistles especially if you're not going to use those functions and sometimes you're paying a premium price for stuff that you are never going to use all right thoughts make sure you leave them in the comments section necessity or not necessity to get a brand new cell phone are y'all waiting in line for when the phone stores open with that newest model of phone or you're like I'm going to wait and see it comes it'll come down in price that's kind of where we land eventually it'll come down in price and the same is true for TVs or stereo audio equipment there's so many different things out there that have been updated recently and they're always updating because they want to try to get you to buy the brand new product it is a little bit of a ploy but you don't have to fall for that if what you have is working and it's fine it's compatible with everything that you have to play on it don't worry about it next one this is a controversial one guys Paid Television streaming services we're not saying it's bad prob the problem is you get three or four of those babies going and you're putting out some serious money every month if youve got Disney plus and you've got Netflix and well I mean let's just be honest Netflix has some really cool series that are going to be coming out and you know I just think that um that we all want to know what's going to be happening with some of those Blockbuster series that are coming back out on Netflix this summer does that get you to subscribe to Netflix when they release a new like episodic series and it's something like Bridgerton don't we all want to know what's going on with Bridgerton seriously does it convince you that you want to get Netflix even for a small period of time do you do it no judgment from us we're just saying that normally this is not considered a Frugal thing now I got to say I'm a little different when it comes to what I watch on TV to the point where hope kind of complains about my watching style but I enjoy watching a certain amount of video Classic Movies over and over again maybe once a year and you know I drive hope nuts a little bit with that but it doesn't cost us anything because I've already got them in our collection all right necessity or not necessity guys here's the next one paper towels this is one we really don't do we don't buy paper towels I think the last set of paper towels we had I was given to us they gave us I don't even know why we were given a roll of paper towels I don't want to guess it's it's been sitting languishing for a really long time we don't do paper towels we really don't we love like we cut up old sheets and old towels towels undershirts thing like when they wear out and you are not going to wear them in public anymore because there is like there is a length you'll go go to there too and go it's usually like somebody your significant other your spouse going you are not wearing that out in public anymore uh then you cut it up and you make little you know Rags out of it and you can stop up spills and things like that we don't do paper towels next one this is a controversial one I y'all know okay this one we have but I put it in here because a dear friend of mine does not have one anymore CU she didn't use it Clow dryers we do hang things out on the line Larry took a significant amount of flak in the comment section because he mentioned in a recent video that when I broke my arm he was doing the laundry and he was using the dryer he was using the dryer and somebody said well you can still hang things out in winter well not when you know remember his arm barely works too it doesn't do much yet this is pretty bad yeah and uh I certainly was not in a condition to go outside and hang things on the line or hang hang things inside we do have an indoor line but a lot of times we do yes but we do occasionally use our dryer do you have one do you use one my friend Julie gave hers away after three years cuz she had not touched it in three years yeah so we do occasionally use our clothes dryer but we were curious whether some of you either own one and don't use it or you just don't own one at all the next necessity or not necessity is prepared and Jarred baby food we did not buy it we had a few like emergency we're doing air quotes again emergency jars of baby food on the Shelf we we tended to use it like if we were going on a picnic or something and it needed to be portable and it just wasn't you know for whatever reason it just was not going to be able to happen for us to take our our pre-made made itome baby food but I mean we just cooked stuff until it was totally tender and smashed it in the food processor until it was Pulp then we then she put it in jars and put it in the freezer and it was ready to go we could take it to my parents house if we went over there for supper and it worked out great I put it in ice cube trays guys standard ice cube tray I think is two tablespoons the standard Ice Cube it it worked really well disposable diapers necessity or not necessity it's okay y'all weigh in in the comments section we uh used disposable diapers overnight yeah I we cloth diapered all four of our boys overnight was just it was a it was a whole thing guys especially when we had more than one child I was like um there was a lot of leakage going on that's all I'm saying a lot of middle of the night taking off the bedding and replacing I was like I think I'm done with this so we did used we used Huggies overnight I think we used them I think we used them some if we traveled too yeah we did some but then the other time we used them was like a church on Sunday mornings yes they did not want kids in the nursery with they diapers they didn't want cloth diapers that was a thing it was a rule well it's hard for them to know what exactly to do with them in between the time that they're changed and we come and pick up our kids so yeah yeah this next one necessity or not necessity fancy baby equipment okay I'm talking about the newest new fangled thing that every mom on the Block is like oh you got to get this it is just such a cool thing when when we had our kids um was it was baby they had baby monitors but the newest thing coming out were the baby monitors that had the little video screen oh they were expensive yeah they W I mean really expensive and I think I don't even know if we even toyed with the idea we had one of the ones where you could hear this child if they you know and we were a small we had a small house honest a Pete and that size square footage if we couldn't hear the baby there was something seriously wrong with us because we didn't use it very much is not that big of a house no uh but you know if we went downstairs or something to you know when the baby was taking a nap we'd have the monitor on but those were cheap I mean cheap cheap cheap I just you know and and they're they're always coming out with something new that they're trying to convince parents you have to have this if you are a responsible parent and a good parent you will have XYZ for your child we we did not do a lot of that at all and I think it improves tell me if you think I'm right I think the more children you have the more this ability to turn away from new fangled things it it's it's like this learned parenting skill where you say no I don't need that you figure out after your first one there's a whole lot of stuff you do not need yeah another controversial issue is food at restaurants now hope and I don't go out to eat for a couple of reasons one is the price the other is our what we eat what we like to eat it isn't really served too much at restaurants restaurants don't serve an awful lot of vegan food so because of that we really don't go out to eat too much we might go and bring something home and then modify it a little bit and add some things from our pantry to make it work but otherwise we really don't go out to eat very much and I think frugal people in general don't do a lot of spending at restaurants because that costs a lot of money yeah and once again restaurants are not they're not a deal breaker for us so e at restaurants it's okay you can tell us um our big thing is going to Aldi and taking ton bucks cuz they do Aldi does have some plant-based things that we would term as vegan junk food yeah and so our big date night is going and getting a couple of those items maybe some chips we which we don't buy very often either bringing them home and popping in a movie that we finally find that we can agree on and and that's our date night we we just don't it's not a lure for us it's not a thing for us uh necessity or not necessity Frozen or prepared Entre these are the things that when you go to Sam's or Costco they're giving you those little samples and they're all the prepared foods yeah because they know that you know especially if you go after church y'all you're going to want to take one home because you are hungry you know maybe the sermon was a little bit longer than normal and you just want to get that shopping done get home and you want instant lunch you're probably going to take it with you and the problem there are multiple problems with with frozen or prepared foods um one of which is you don't want to eat some of the stuff that's in those foods and they're not really that good for you they're high fat they're high salt they're High pretty much everything you don't want to have in your life and so we don't like that for that reason but they're really expensive expensive they are expensive for what you're getting you're paying a lot of money for the convenience of having it prepared and then Frozen however we understand that there are couples that both are working and once in a while it's nice to treat yourself so we're not saying never ever do it but as a general rule of thumb it's better if you don't now Frozen prepared Entre that's that's one of the one of 30 things that we think you really should avoid buying at the grocery store if you want to get a gander at the other 29 things that we said now you probably want to skip this aisle at the grocery store we did a whole video on it we call it the squeaky cart video because I threw this squeaky cart at the beginning of the video the store was packed there was like only one other cart even available and I was like I am not going back and getting it so the cart is squeaky in the video it stayed with us the whole time actually it kind of became its own character in the video yeah it's very funny video you want to see it I'm going to link it and yet informational at the same time I'm going to link it guys up above and I'll also put it in the description of this video the next thing that frugal people avoid pretty much is anything at full price we don't like to pay full price for any item that we buy there's always a way to get around that either it goes on sale or goes on clearance or or something you just have to look be patient wait and make sure that you have enough working in your pantry for instance if it's a grocery item that you can eat and wait for that item to get off of that full price all right question necessity or not necessity do y'all ever is there ever a circumstance under which you're like I'm going to pay full price for it you guys know what my deal breaker is my Fitbit I've said it before I'll say it again I love this watch if it broke I don't think Larry would even fight me on it the next day we be buying a new Fitbit I would try to find a discount on it okay I would try to find some sort of coupon available on a Fitbit but I don't What's your deal breaker what's your thing that you're like I don't know this breaks I'm paying full price and I'm going to replace it this next one's controversial too guys necessity or not necessity loans yeah and and I think everybody's dream is to be is to be debt free and I think that people are too consistent at feeling like there's no option in making loans their first default yeah and I think that is a huge problem if you're going to buy a home you'll get no shade from us if you put 20% down and take yourself out of 15year mortgage there's no problem with that um we you know we pay cash for cars we think that that's entirely possible to do when hope first brought the idea home that we were going to pay cash for a car I thought nobody pays cash for a car you just pay off the loan you don't worry about some people don't even worry about what they pay for the car they're worried about the payment the monthly payment how much are they paying to the bank every month and I just thought you know it's a given you you pay uh a loan for the rest of your life uh and once we got off of that I realized how much better it was just to pay cash and save that interest in the bank for you to use for something better his exact words when I brought this up over 35 years ago when I said hey let's pay cash for our next car he looked at me and said are you crazy yeah I think I I think I he used the word crazy yeah yeah I said it very lovingly and tactfully though but I can tell by your raised eyebrows and your what I could tell that you really were being very very kind and compassionate and about it I yeah I but I think that once we started on this path of frugality and figuring out that it was really possible to live within our means and I think that's why he said you're crazy because we were making so little money just barely over minimum wage that the thought even the thought of being able to live successfully within our means I think it was just too much for him I didn't know how we could save up enough money to pay cash for a car that's one of the problems because it was enough just to have the money to pay off the loans and we each had a loan on our cars at that time y we cannot wait to see how y'all vote in all of these points in the comments section so if you're not buying these things here's our question are you really even having any fun is frugality just a drag because that's where your thought process kind of eventually goes to no there can be real fun to being Frugal and in fact we did a whole video on that topic have fun be frugal the video is right over there if you don't know us I'm Larry and this is hope we're from under the Medan she doesn't talk very much and that's the way it's going to be I

Channel: Under the Median

Views: 254,133

Keywords: frugality, frugal living, frugal living hacks, frugal living tips, frugal habits, under the median, how to save money, frugal living ideas, frugal tips, frugal, save money, frugal people, saving money, saving money tips, frugal lifestyle, frugal hacks, money saving tips, things i dont buy, things frugal people do, frugal community, frugal money, saving tips, frugal living 2024, frugal living tips to save money, Things frugal people don't buy

Id: aDa6Qf1vjcE

Length: 23min 59sec (1439 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024