Folks, being frugal should not be "one more thing to do." It should make your life better.

Some thoughts for the folks finding themselves exhausted by trying to be frugal-

Frugality should not be a chore, "one more thing to do," a huge siphon on your time, or exhausting. Frugality is supposed to improve your life!

I came to this mindset as a person who struggled day in and day out to pay the rent after graduating from college, and for 5 years spent every day looking at my bank account, running around creation to store after store trying to find a deal, spent endless time at yard sales, thrift stores, and bargain outlets to get the best deal, and obsessing over the smaller amounts of money. My lowest point came after I got laid off from a job, was on unemployment, and living in my brother's unheated basement(and still paying rent!) All the while my car loan bill and student loan bill loomed, and every day I thought about a life that didn't so closely resemble Hell. One day at my lowest point, I was perseverating on whether or not I should go to Lowe's to spend $10 on clips to attach an old bedsheet to the ceiling rafters in order to keep more heat in my unheated room, and all the sudden I realized.... F THIS! What was I doing ??? I realized then something I've fully formulated now-

Frugality is supposed to be about creating a better life that you LIKE to live. We can obsess over every small amount of money spent, or we can focus on the big picture, adopt the habits that make the most meaningful difference, and the rest should follow suit- and that's the best we can all do to get by while getting some form of enjoyment out of our lives.

One thing I've realized, as part of this mindset, is that your typical frugality advice usually focuses on still trying to have a Boomer-style middle class existence while still being poor. If we just put in extra time "frugalizing," so the advice goes, we don't have to think critically about this lifestyle and whether we actually care about any of it- Going out to eat all the time, driving a new car, buying endless junk to fill our homes and generally keeping up with the Joneses. But seriously, if you sat down for an hour to just think about it, how much of this actually gives you any joy? How happy are you to spend 2 hours filtering through circulars and couponing, making your own home cleaners to save $1, etc.? To me these methods are the exact wrong thing we can do, because I don't think I'm the only one here that gets 0 happiness with the results of this.

Instead, I've changed my habits and formed a frugal mindset by critical thinking about what gives me happiness, and eliminating tasks and "frugalizing" things I dislike doing and costs money to boot.

For example, I own a 2012 Honda Civic. It's starting to get on the older side, but it has no problems as of yet. I got in a fender bender a couple years ago, and it has a scratch on the front. I could get that fixed, but when I really think about it.... I just don't care enough to spend a few hundred on it. So I drive it, people comment about it sometimes, but you know what... o well. I'm also getting comments about the next car I'm going to buy, and for about a week there I considered it. But when I really thought about it, the only thing I really want out of the car is a better interior. I would like a leather interior and heated seats more than anything else, because I have a long commute. So in the next year or two, that's what I'm going to do instead of buying a new car. It might be $2k or so, but I'm starting to save up for it now, and I'm going to drive the thing until it's dead. It also helps that I really don't care about cars, which took me a while to realize, I just care about being comfortable(thus the seats). Why spend another $20k when I can spend $2k to get what I really care most about?

Another thing I save hundreds of dollars a month on is food. Over the years, I've realized that I really enjoy about 10 meals, and learned how to cook them. I could write a paragraph about how eating a "variety" of foods is usually an illusion, but I'll save that rant here. I occasionally make something else outside of those 10 meals, maybe once a week, but aside from slight variations, the things I make week to week are pretty similar. This saves HUNDREDS every month by knowing the staple foods we need and getting the best deals on them through practice. I don't spend any time couponing and truly very little time meal planning- through practice, I'm able to toss together leftovers to make something we like, and there's very little waste. Practice, practice, practice here is key. This leads to us spending somewhere between $175-$200 per month for myself, my husband, and 2 pets, which is hundreds less than your average food stamp recipient for a family of 2 humans.

There's a lot more I can say here, but.... my best advice is to think long and carefully about what really matters to you, full stop, and go from there. Stop trying to live the life you think you should want to have, and start living the life you actually care about. Make your life simpler and enjoy the things that fire you up. Most aspects of the "middle class" life advertised to us are things that many of us might not really care about anyway, and its certainly not worth sacrificing your mental state and valuable time on Earth just to keep up with it all!