Drowning in Debt? You Need Extreme Frugality.

so there's basically two ways you can be extreme right you can one do a bunch of little habits that will snowball into a larger amount of savings or two just do one or two really big things that are extreme that just by doing the one or two things saves a couple thousands of dollars right so if you already have one tip in mind that you're just like waiting to see if I say go ahead and put it in the comments right now and that way either you could be like ha I knew it she said it at the end and if not everyone else learned a new Frugal tip right first let's look at a bunch of little things that when done over time in combination with other things will lead to a decent amount of savings because these are the things that most people are going to be able to do at least a couple of them number one is to mend your clothes or in the case of what I'm doing right now I am mending my daughter's favorite dress so I don't think it's likely going to be worth it for everyone to spend hours learning to darn 25 socks but if you have articles of clothing that have just a simple button that needs to be re-sewn or you really need to hem the bottom thumbs because you get short tiny stubby legs fixing things like a simple rip I've got like a little hole in the stitching these things are pretty simple to just whip up with a few basic stitches and you're good to go and then that saves you from having to buy a whole new article of clothing and if you've got some articles of clothing that are completely Beyond repair I've got something to do with those in a second two your food budget is one of the largest categories of your spending that you have like complete control over but one of the biggest threats to your grocery budget is food waste if you are ready to go like extreme in your money saving you need to treat food waste like hot lava my personal way of dealing with this problem is to just freeze everything freeze food that's about to go bad freeze food you just cooked so now that's a meal you can eat just pop it out of the freezer put it in the microwave and now you have a new meal ready to go later freeze bulk meat that you buy parse it up into one pound baggies put it in the freezer just freeze everything I actually just did a video about a bunch of the different ways we Preserve food around our house instead of having to throw it away so I'll put the link for that one in the description if you need more ideas aside from the freezer in the same vein number three I'd say eat your leftovers or if you're already doing that just create stackable meal plans so this means you have the leftovers from one meal just flow right into the next right so you make like pork roast and then those leftovers are gonna all of a sudden become Carnitas and those leftovers will go on down and they'll become pork pie I've also called these like magical transforming leftover meals because it prevents the people in your family from going like I don't want to eat this four days in a row why do they sound like Grandmas so for this week we're having spaghetti and meatballs tomorrow night and the leftovers from that are going to flow right into our pot of chili later in the week I didn't think something like eat your leftovers was extreme Frugal advice and then I met someone whose husband just didn't eat leftovers like he and his entire family they just thought leftovers were dirty disgusting they didn't want to eat them even like Thanksgiving leftovers they would just eat whatever they wanted Thanksgiving Day and the rest was in the trash I have a tiny heart attack when I think about their food bill right like who does that but speaking of throwing away food number four if you really can't eat something anymore instead of throwing in the garbage you can try composting it because that way at least if you're gonna have a garden which I will get to composting your stuff at home is going to make gardening so cheap here is my compost pile it is made from scavenged wooden ballots from the warehouse down the road number five ditch your paper towels I feel like we buy paper towels two maybe three times a year um because there are some things you want to be able to wipe up and throw away like I had a chicken butt I said I had a use for all of those pieces of clothing you couldn't use anymore once you have things like a t-shirt that is no longer worth repairing um you can see this used to be a t-shirt you can see this used to be one of my kitchen towels that what happened to it I think it got slime on it you just have to cut them up and now these are very very handy so some like this that used to be like kitchen towels super absorbent obviously the t-shirts are not that absorbent but neither is a paper towel and you know what these ones are good for is if you've got like a really sticky mess these are going to work so much better at cleaning up sticky messes especially like little fingers with PB and J if you're looking for some extreme ideas make yourself a ragbin all right here's a little hack for you so when you have your butter wrappers and then you take the butter off don't throw this away because there is still like a decent amount of grease on this like I can feel it um and that you can use that for grease and now I need a rag and you can use the butter wrappers for things like greasing pans before you make a loaf of bread or if you're going to make muffins in the muffin tin you can use the wrappers to grease the muffin tin and then you're saving yourself you know a little bit but that's what we're talking about right here right little habits little snowball into bigger savings later down the road and I just will fold them back up and put them back in the butter door number seven this one might depend a bit on where you live but learn to identify a few wild edibles that grow near you and now you have access to free food Falling Fruit dot org falling fruit.com I forget I'll put it in the description you can look up is there an apple tree in your area that you could pick apples from when it's apple season is there an orange tree is there a blueberry bush it also like lists dumpsters that are good for dumpster diving I don't use it for that but it's called Falling Fruit because they wanted people to not let wild edibles that you could eat go to waste you could also learn to identify wild fiddleheads or herbs or other greens maybe you get a guide and here she shows you how to identify mushrooms that are fine to eat I have eaten wild edible mushrooms and I am still here and just don't be an idiot with this tip don't go to the hospital and say homegrown Hillary made you do it because I don't want to get sued please don't eat things you don't know what they are please and thank you back to safer food topics bake your own bread if you're nervous about this or you seem really overwhelmed when you look for recipes online and you wonder if you need a bread maker no I got you I'll put again in the description a link to my favorite bread recipe the one that I started making bread with and now I'm all the way up to like fancy artisanal sourdough Loaves and I feel so proud of how far I've come in like five years there's anything I can say about like living frugally it's that you need time to build up to it give yourself Grace as you're working on building the skills bread making is worth it the only way it saves you money though is if you don't eat an entire loaf of bread in one day because it's so delicious when you make it from scratch ask me how I know it astounds me that this is considered an extreme tip but like clean and maintain the things you have instead of throwing them away well what's that oh you don't believe me that people throw away perfectly good things just because they're dirty well let me introduce you to point number ten trash picking sometimes when it's trash day and everyone's put all their stuff on the curb you can just you know go around take a little look-see or if you're a little nervous about this wait till it's trash day on the other side of town and go over there and take a little look-see I have definitely been that person who is out pushing a stroller taking the kids on a walk saw something real interesting and took it home and hosed it down and now that's how uh my kids craft stuff is organized all right eleven I have a minimalist wardrobe other people might call this like having a uniform or a capsule wardrobe but you know just paring down the number of clothes you own because not only does it taking up clutter in your house it's taking up a lot of time like you have to go and shop for all of the clothes you have to do all the laundry for all the clothes organize all of the clothes you have to take time every morning deciding what to wear because you have so many options and then obviously it costs more money all right hear me out on this one brushing and flossing I had a dentist appointment last week and I was chatting with the hygienist you know how you chat with the hygienist yeah like that he was saying that like 90 of the people she sees just clearly and will admit to her they just never floss and you know what's really heck inexpensive and painful is dental work which is apparently not covered by insurance for medical insurance like why so it'll cost you either an arm and a leg or your firstborn child yeah so brush and floss and see if you can avoid those all right last on the little habits list is just drinking more water instead of sodas alcohols or coffees or teas like they're delicious and I drink them too but if you're trying to be real extreme water if water isn't tasty where you live because I know it's not everywhere lemons aren't that expensive and did you know you can put them in the freezer if all you're planning on doing is just getting the juice out of them you don't care about having these like nice fancy little wedge shapes yeah you just put them in the freezer when they're at Peak freshness and then you take them out roll them boom and then actually you'll be able to get more juice out of them if you freeze them first so the more you know all right next let's go big let's talk about a couple and there's only a couple big things you can do to save a ton of money fewer people will be able to use these but if you're one of the lucky few then like it can save you thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars so I think it's still worth me sharing because if it even helps like one of you guys worth it number one try something called home sharing this isn't Airbnb this isn't just get a roommate it's a little bit different as far as I can tell there's like 16 different states that have some kind of official organization there are programs that match up people who have larger homes have at least a bedroom in their home but can't physically maintain the home anymore or people who need help around the house and they match those people up with people who need a place to stay but are physically able and willing to help with you know just general chores around the house helping the person be independent for longer and matching those kind of people up and you know there's background checks involved interviews like you know they're not just going to throw random people in your house I left the website for the national Resource Center for Home Sharing in the description so you can check that out see if your state is one of the ones that participates next is move there are high cost of living areas and there are low cost of living areas and there's actually some calculators online where you can like plug in like how much money you make and where you live and how much that amount of money would be worth if you moved to a different place like if you could get a similar job I know that's not always possible but I don't know I just have fun playing around with calculators like that I think it's interesting or you might be moving not to a lower cost of living area but just to like you're downsizing and getting a small physically smaller place these are big decisions and especially now with interest rates where they are and everything generally speaking moving can be a way to shave off you know thousands of dollars a year all right while we're talking about getting rid of stuff this is one of my favorite stories you can get rid of your car I know a family and they live somewhere where it's negative 30 degrees many months of the year with feet and feet and feet of snow and and husband and wife had a chat and decided you know what we got to be a one-car family that's that's what's gonna make the numbers work and so a husband manned up rode his bike to work every day all winter even when it was negative 30. and he was like a native he knows how to not die in that weather you know what they say about there's a will there's a way and last I'm just going to leave you with my favorite throw your own food Garden raise animals whole nine yards there are ways of doing it affordably that's why people still do it if you want to learn more about crazy ways to save money then maybe some not that crazy ways that you've just never heard of before so I'm going to link to another video check that video out next by YouTube

Channel: Homegrown Hillary

Views: 43,508

Keywords: Debt free journey, Drowning in debt, Extreme frugal living, Extreme frugality, How to get out of debt, Save money motivation, Save money tips, Save more money, dave ramsey, debt, drowning in debt how to get out, extreme frugality tips, frugal, frugal habits, frugal living, frugal living habits, frugal living hacks, frugal living ideas, frugal living tips, frugal tips, how to pay off debt, how to pay off debt fast, how to save money, money saving tips, saving money

Id: DA9P57Gytok

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2023