A Frugal Way of Thinking

Here's is a money saving trick that I use myself, though it may start to drive you to complete frugality when you use it. It's a mental trick where you just convert the price of the item you are buying into the number of hours you worked to make that much money. The more you hate your job, the more effective this mental trick will be.

So let's say you take home $10 per hour after taxes. You are considering buying a new pair of shoes that cost $120. So that means you worked a day and a half that week just to be able to afford to buy these new shoes. You worked and slaved for 12 hours so that you could wrap your feet in some new leather. Now weigh that in your mind. You may second guess this purchase and really need to analyze whether you need these shoes. Shoes at least will last you for a long time and you may need new ones, so you might be able to rationalize this. Or maybe you'll realize that 12 hours of your time and effort is worth more than a pair of shoes and not get them at all or settle for a much cheaper pair.

Let's look at another example that many can relate to. Are you a coffee drinker who shells out $6 at their local Starbucks every morning before work? Well think of it this way. Every morning you are already in the hole for 40 minutes of your time. You will need to spend the first 40 minutes of your day working just to pay for that coffee purchase in the morning. Multiply that by all 5 days and you have spent 3 hours and 20 minutes working just to pay for your coffee habit.

Try using this thinking on your big ticket item purchases and your head will explode at the thought of buying a new vehicle. A $30,000 new car would take you 3,000 hours of work to pay for. That's 75 weeks of full-time work. That's almost 19 months of your entire salary! Of course this isn't even taking into account the interest you will pay if you took out a loan to get it. Once you look at this figure, you might wise up to the idea of buying a nice used car at a third of the price and with cash if possible.

So take into account every minute you count as it ticks by slowly on the clock at work. Remember every horrible meeting you sat through listening to people rambling on. Think of all the bull you had to listen to your boss spout out. Think of all the work you put in every day at your job. Then think, "Is this item worth that much to me?" before you buy it. Try this out and you might be surprised at the purchases you just don't find to be worth it anymore.