The Benefits of Frugality

[Music] although y'all is patent hi Frank country homestead hello and God is good yes god is good all the time and today we wanted to talk about frugality and the benefits thereof yep and I know a lot of the of our audience are seeing the same tune as we are that's why they're attracted to our channel some people who are looking to get into frugality happen across our channel or the states they might see a tag line on the video that shows frugality and sometimes people just are attracted to that and they wanted to change a change in lifestyle so today we want to talk a little bit about frugality the reasons why we're frugal I'm also just the benefits so how does how does living frugal lifestyle benefit us right and this is going to be open-ended so the main purpose of us putting this out there isn't just for us to share our side but so that you can share too in comments below and that will also be potter for future video it's it took me a few tries to try to say this right so because we're going to be sharing your experiences in and reading them in our future videos so please share with us down below in the comment section your own personal stories and listen to what we have to say here so you can kind of give you an idea what we're looking at for you to share with us so we can learn from each other right and I and also because a lot of times people they like to play our videos like this and just listen while they're doing tours cuz I'm the same way because we don't have time to just sit and watch and so the same people I don't have time to sit and watch don't have time to sit and read through all the comments but where we can turn around and share them by reading them to you and they can play that and listen to your comments being read by us so they can they can glean from your own stories that way so I thought it would be a pretty cool idea we've done this with other topics and it's gone over quite well right so so for starters we've got I wrote down in my horrible handwriting that Patrick can't read and I actually had to ask him what I can interpret some of her words but yeah but anyway is when you get into a frugal lifestyle once once you've made that decision and you jumped in and you're you're living that way you suddenly realize one day that certain things just are no longer important anymore certain things that used to be really important like for me being a little more in fashion not as important as I was I never saw as important as some people did but I did like to have this enough of it on there that I was still somewhat a slave to fashion that I felt like I had to have the latest in style shirts and jeans and whatever else shoes and so on boils down to marry that's just one thing or another thing would be you know feeling like every year you got to update your vehicle and get a brand new rig and you get passing you know you're not a slave to consumerism anymore as I guess the best way to say it because that's gonna cover the whole gamut of all the different things that we feel like we have to have in order to keep up with the Joneses right well it boils down to vanity right vanity vanity and the way you look what you have pride in life a lot of us guys out there it's what you have and the different stair steps in life of success that you obtain whether it's in your job career you know or you're you know tools in your shop or whatever your thing is well there's hunting fishing hiking biking you know there's all different levels of vanity within that with that realm and part of frugality is is coming to grips with that and being able to have a troll over it right you know once you can get past that I mean I realize for some people who are in the middle of that you know where we're having the the Gucci purse and the the whatever it is is really important it can be hard to see past that when you're in the middle of it and but once you get to a certain point where it's like well I got to be more frugal if I want to get out of debt I got to cut all this I got to cut all the fat I got to cut all this stuff then eventually one day you realize it really doesn't matter so you can drive around in your little economy Geo car with a cracked windshield and have somebody drive by in their big fancy rig and be laughing at you and you can just shake your head and laugh right back because you realize that you know what I would much rather be where I'm at right now driving a car that saving me a lots of money that only cost me that I was able to pay cash for then to being a big fancy rig that cut down I'm still having to pay interest on because I'm in debt to have that rig and then worried about somebody denting it all the time when you're driving a little junk car you don't worry about that so much yeah but you know a lot of times by driving that small economy car I you is driving that back and forth to work as a commuter car yeah save me a lot of money over the years you're just not too recently we controlled ourselves to the point where we had enough money set aside that a good deal came up on a car so now we have a more reliable card as far as prettier so we don't get left out anyway yeah so that increases our vanity a little night yeah so anyway this is more reliable and now that we don't do a lot of commuting it's not a lot a little more dependable for four or longer drives and such but we we waited for a long time winter for this deal to come along it's not a brand new car and it's in really good shape with low mileage so yeah you know the one of the boundaries saying all this for the reason for one good reason for being frugal is that if you have the money it doesn't necessarily mean you have to spend it you know we see a lot of times we spend money because it helps us to feel good it's a short-term endorphin release or whatever like that for excitement so we can forget about all our problems to think okay we've got the you know we got the tiger by the tail when it comes to life but that's a false sense of security mm-hmm if you're frugal just because you have the money doesn't mean you have to spend it or just because you have the resource doesn't mean you have to use it so you can wait for those good deals to come along you can swallow your pride can go to a garage sale and say oh I can use one of those and you know get it for a real good deal of most of what we've got anymore is second-hand all right no you know we do buy new things no don't get us wrong we're not but a lot of the things that a lot a lot of the things that we we we know we purchase so we just recently bought a Apple press brand-new but you know because Western doesn't have time to build one so I wasn't gonna keep bothering them about it so what's the benefit of an Apple press well you're making your own cider and you're you know you're making your grape juice it's still making a self sufficient two different things so that's kind of an investment for us right the grain mills another thing you know okay well people in wow that's a lot of money spent on a grain mill yeah we bought it new we could've wait if we could have waited for a while matter of fact I've come across some of those on Craigslist that were half price but you know we see it seemed like we needed it yeah for part of our prepping and we didn't know when or if one would come up for sale anywhere so that's things like the presses in the mills and different things like that or some other things that we sometimes that we we buy immediately just recently we came across a couple of brand new all-american canners that was another instant need your purchase but I think I was $20 for two of them yeah and I did even though I already had one that way I bought brand new years ago and I'm still glad I did it was good to see these because my daughter-in-law wants to get into pressure canning and so I I bought both of them because yeah $20 from both I mean and who knows that either somebody else may be able to use the other one or I'll keep it for myself for when I have smaller jobs because they're different sizes but I have a video just on now to being frugal will also allow you to be more giving because your expenditures aren't aren't taking up all of your money right now I got to be careful about saying that because you know we don't make a fortune you know we live a very conservative lifestyle so some of the purchases that we make you know so you might say well you just use one out and pay cash for that huh yeah well I thought you guys are broke well we are but we're not broken the means of oh if you got the money spend it all right where this is coming out right but you know we're very careful about how we write spend money yeah because you just never know what's gonna come up you know I've had a abscess tooth so you calling it an says - I think so and infected tooth back here and but you know having the money set aside for that be able to pay cash for a visit some people might think of as insurance you know a lot of people will go out and buy all these different insurance and they may or may not pay out and so by having the cash and a lump sum then when an emergency comes up I think he had emergencies down there I might be talking out of turn also I didn't get slapped some okay so um but when an emergency comes up there you have the money right if an opportunity comes up then there you have the money our roof started to blow off insurance company didn't come through on us so guess what we had to pay for that you ain't gonna right and so the other thing is is you know I'm working on the side of the house over here and realize that the windows are are leaking and so I could very well have some rot on this back wall you're seeing behind us so I'm gonna probably have to tear all of that siding off this next year and investigate that and find out what's going on around the windows and so basically put a bandaid on that coped everything in and painted it so that'll last the winter but there is moisture in the wall and so having having that money set aside because insurance companies are are scam artists and so insurance is a waste of money but that's just my opinion that can be argued that's fine you do what you got to do but anyway at least but wouldn't you got cash suicide so you pay all this money into your insurance and then it's not there you know it's you've just thrown it all away you get nothing back from it if you never use it within that year within that six month period or you try to use it and they deny you because of whatever reason and so but then you've got the cash set aside that's your insurance and it's there for you no matter whether you know you can't be turned down because that cash is there yeah it's up to you to make this right or not that a good claim or not right and so I mean we are a little bit out of order and the fact that you know the way we're talking about this is how do you get to that point where you have the cash and why is it that Patrick and I can both work from home and everything that we're doing you know we don't we just we earn our money through our Etsy store and through YouTube I mean it an amazon those are our three main sources right there and that's what we're surviving off of it how are we doing that because we're not you know if you were to take a look at what we're getting from YouTube it's not that much you know with there might be people to have the same amount of subscribers that we have that might be getting two three four times as much as we are it's you know we don't put that many we don't put commercials in the middle of our videos that would give us more money but we don't want to do that we want to keep it clean and neat and give you guys a better experience and so but how are we able to live off of what we're doing here is because of the frugal lifestyle but how did we get here in the first place it's because when Patrick was working outside the home we were busting and we became extremely frugal to the point of you know foregoing Sephora going yeah a lot of things that we would normally do like you know the yearly family reunions that would require us to drive the long distance that cost us a lot of money and you know pulling our camp trailer with our GMC and that was a lot of feel and so it was a lot of sacrifice you know so we had to let go of this stuff for a couple of years in order to crack down and pay off the house because we knew it was important and we have a whole video just on how we became debt-free but the point is is it was it getting it to the frugal mentality we had to do it we had to in order to get out of debt because we knew that was important and we're so glad that we did and it was important that we did it for more than just what we didn't know what was going to happen with their future but for the fact that once you're debt-free you've got lots more financial free and then you can start taking that extra money extra that would have went to to your house payment to your house payment and then you can start putting it away and that's what we were able to do and that's why we had the cash to be able to get this car when it came available because it was too good of a it was too good of a deal to pass up and we needed a more reliable car so that now we can get rid of the Geo because it's not near as reliable we can turn around and sell that and maybe get back what we paid for when we paid cash for that car so the past four vehicles that we bought we've paid cash outright we've bought used the last brand-new vehicle that we bought was our GMC and that was 2002 and we still have that truck it's still a very good reliable truck we just only use it when we absolutely have to because it it costs more to run it because it's a bigger rig and all that so it's actually I'm considering taking that to go help my dad because diesel is cheaper than gasoline what it is now can I come forth yeah it's in vacillates but right now it's cheaper and so taking the GMC is cheaper than driving the gas truck so a lot of these things you you have to you have to start thinking differently you have to start thinking okay if I turn this knob push this button step on this throttle Azura is they're more financially savvy way of taking care take you know doing the same process doing it by hand instead of turning you know turning on a switch or running a mode right do I have time to sit there and hand crank the grain mill or you know can I run run the electric motor off solar and accomplish the same task in a more economical amount of time so a lot of these things you got to weigh back and forth I mean do you have time to do this do you have time to do it by hand or fumble around the dark or whatever it is that you're gonna do to save save a few cents in your electricity bill many people will look at well you guys have-have solar in conjunction with your power well that's not saving money but we that that that's a little bit different thing it's the same but not the same it's the same the fact that yes it was an investment upfront but now we have it right so now we can start saving money because of it right so that's a retirement investment yeah it's an independence investment mm-hmm so there's arguments both ways on solar so there's there's a lot of different factors in a lot of different ways of looking at one particular facet of frugality and you have to determine the bottom line is is what am I going to benefit with from this financially do I have the time to sacrifice because a lot of times when you're being frugal it actually takes a little bit more time to accomplish the same task is to do it automated you know so yeah and so and then another example of how being frugal and then with you know just living a frugal lifestyle and making these choices so that we could put more money away was when that property came up and we were able to pay cash for it and so again we're still debt-free we finally got another little piece of property and then if another piece of property that's a little bit bigger comes along or the people that own the chunk next to us decide to sell it to us we've got some cash that we can we can purchase that because we're still trying to put that cash away as much as we can and and to always be prepared and it's not even just about that it's not even just about being able to buy more stuff and more things it's about like we said the emergencies or you know when my mom passed away being able to have that freedom to both fight and time wise to just kind of put things aside set things aside we don't have to worry about calling in and getting time off work or worrying about the paycheck because we're having to take time off work we can go deal with my mom's house and and get all that done and do the funeral and and you know and deal with these things as they come up and not worry about then we got to go back and now we're in debt we had to use a credit card to do all this stuff or whatever you can be a little more spontaneous right you know and a dollar will stretch a lot farther than if you have the lattes and go out to eat and have the big fancy car and my gosh you know that doggone trucks anymore out there you buy go out buy a new truck you know eighty thousand dollars for a new rig you know that's unbelievable and comprehensible but anyway you know not listener make a living with it I wouldn't recommend it but there's a lot of good used rigs out there that you can get a fraction of the money for and still accomplish the same tasks yeah I mean you might not look as cool but yeah it's just you have to balance out what you know this wasn't really supposed to be all about how to be frugal cuz we have a lot of videos just on that we have a whole series this is more about the benefits and how how its benefited us and one of the things I wanted to bring up to was the fact that when you start trying to find ways to be able to put more money away or to get out of debt so that then you can start putting more money away you're forced to be creative with what you have with and it really works the brain too and so it's like well can I instead of going out and buying this brand new thing like I did with the apple cider press thing yes Patrick could have built one but in this case his time was better service somewhere else so that it was worth it for me to go ahead and buy the press but in other situations he we've looked at things in cycle - he could make this in just a few minutes or a few hours and now with lumber that he in a shock already you know like when he built a little shoe rack for her bedroom and different things like that or he made this countertop which took more than a few hours but you know he has a video on now or we recycled the old lower cabinets from the kitchen he did all that work on him and put him in here we didn't have to buy all new kitchen cabinets in here and so many different things and like I said we have a whole series of videos about frugality and lots of people's ideas in there too and different things that you might not have thought about different ways that you can save money so you can check those out but but anyway just some of the benefits and then vacations we kind of threw that out we don't really take vacations they're not they're just not something we really we used to all the time but even when we did our vacations were always more focused on family you know going doing family camp outs and stuff like that it still cost us money but to us it was money that went a lot farther and you got we got a lot more of it than than spending three to four times as much to go to some fancy you know to go to another country or go to a theme park or whatever which to us this wasn't important we would have rather taken that money and that time to go spend with family and well bear in mind we don't there's nothing wrong with that if that's right thing but our focus right now is to give you guys ideas right on what the benefits are of being frugal and some of those vehicles it'll take you there so some things you know we're not more not to catch all or no all all information to being frugal but this we just like to throw out some ideas to you guys of things that we've done that might help you guys in your quest or venture to go and be frugal and get out of debt and why you might want to do that and that's why we're here so anyway back to vacations my point I was trying to make is that if something comes up you know you've got a family that says hey we're gonna have a get-together here you know and it's it's a place that's 10 hour drive away maybe it's a sudden thing or or maybe it's you know what we really need a break today we really just need you know some middle of the week we just we just need a break we can hop in the rig we can go to town we can just take that one time to go out to eat and just enjoy some time away from the house and we can afford to do it because we've got the money set aside and and it's actually more enjoyable that one rare time we go out to eat because we don't it's not a habit it's not something we feel we have to do like you know like some people they don't have any other choice they just have to go out to eat all the time because they don't have time to cook for themselves drains down it comes that comes to self discipline and saying okay you can treat yourself but don't spend more than you have coming in so you can still go out to eat I mean you can still take a vacation to Disneyland or whatever your thing is right but always bear in mind one of the secrets and benefits of frugality is to self-regulate or self-discipline yourself into a point of control that you can reward yourself every so often and that's based on your income you know some people might be able to do it once a month some people might do it once a year you know if you get that house paid for we get that small bill paid for first you know and then get the credit cards paid for get the car paid for get the house paid for you know any time that you get something paid for treat yourself or look at it as look at that raise that I got I got an extra so much money a month I just gave myself a big raise and he gave yourself a big load off your back too because you have less debt that you're that you have to worry about you don't have that bill anymore and so that's that's part of part of the benefits of being frugal is the freedom that that comes with that the freedom the satisfaction the confidence the self-worth all that stuff just gets a little more solidified every time you reach that milestone or that you yeah you you get past that point of wow I've got this off my back now now I can focus on other things or yeah yeah so I mean it's there's nothing wrong with you know I'm going out to eat or take an advance fancy vacations and I never mean to top down on that but it but there is something wrong with it if that or whatever else it is buying stuff is keeping you from being able to put money away for emergencies for for being able to pay cash for a new rig when your other one breaks down and can't use it anymore instead of having to go back into debt again for to get another rig you know if you're always staying ahead you know then it's okay go out to eat now and then as long as you don't let it get so out of hand that now you don't have any money saved anymore because you've just spent it all just in just to have fun and so it's it's a matter of finding that balance and and and getting in that that again financial freedom is such an important thing you don't want to be slaves to your bank you don't want to be slaves to fashion you don't want to be slaves to society and what they and let them call the shots of what's right for you you know for you know go back to the vacation things some people say omegas is the best place ever to go visit and you know to go to vacation okay well if you enjoy that things sure but if that doesn't sound like something that appeals to you don't do it just because everyone else seems to be doing it and you want to be able to have those pictures to put up on Facebook to an impressive listen Alan if that if that's the only reason you're doing doing it then isn't that just a big waste of money you know is it drawing you closer to your spouse or your family to do that or is it only for the sake of of your pride and so that's where we got to look at every issue whether it be the car the clothes you know even that grain knows that a sake of pride or whatever it is is it just is it about your pride or is about what's best for you and your family and being financially savvy mm-hmm so now again I want to remind you please share your stories down below of how being frugal we have a whole series on how to be frugal we want to hear how being frugal has helped you what have been some situations that have come up opportunity yeah opportunities or emergencies or whatever it is that having some money set aside or being out of debt or just plain because of your frugality you've learned skills that you probably would have never had otherwise you know those are the kind of stories we want to hear so that we can then turn around and then share them with other people who would like to hear that so go ahead and put those down below there you go okay I couldn't have said anybody mom oh I'm good well we hope you enjoyed this video and that maybe you learned something new well thanks for watching take care [Music] [Music]

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 7,932

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs, frugality

Id: uw4NYxKEsLU

Length: 30min 13sec (1813 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019