Stimulus Check

I have not talked about this much on the blog- but if our calculations are correct, our economic stimulus check will be here on Friday. What are you doing with yours? We're being totally boring and predictable and sending ours to our debt. One of the key tenants of frugality is to not go crazy with your windfalls and raises and birthday gifts from grandma, so we're being responsible and all that jazz.

Somedays we do fantasize about throwing of the shackles of responsibility and going nuts. Who doesn't wake up in the morning and want to fly first class to Paris for dinner? Or get a shiny plasma TV and DVR to go with it? Sometimes, especially when we read headlines like this, we wonder why we keep trying, keep cutting costs, keep trying to get totally debt free, including the mortgage. I'm pretty sure it will be worth it, but some days, I get distracted by the shiny.

Frugal Friday: Frugal Burnout

There has been a lot of discussion the past few days about frugal burnout. Meredith pointed to two articles, which led to an article on Frugal Hacks. Crystal pointed to Being Frugal’s article on paying off debt with too much intensity.

Gentle reader, I admit that I get burned out on frugality at times. I love what our frugality has brought us- our own home (which will hopefully be paid off within the next five years), our fabulous educations, our vacations, our peaceful slumber at night, secure in the knowledge that the bills are paid and the savings are respectable. But sometimes? Sometimes I get so dang tired of planning, planning, PLANNING everything. I get tired of watching every penny, of having to dig through the racks of thrift store to find something fabulous, rather than just buying a new shirt at the mall. I love our roommate, but there are days when I miss it being just my husband and I. I grow weary waiting for the movies to come to the library, or the latest book to become available for me to read. Of figuring out what to eat based on what we have, not on what sounds yummy. It takes a lot of thought, a lot of planning, and a lot of creativity.

On the best days- in fact, most of the time for me, it is fun! It’s a treasure hunt at Goodwill, and in the long run I’d much rather have the house and wear used clothes instead of living in an apartment wearing new clothes. The trade offs are so, so worth it to me in the end. But sometimes my inner five year old just wants to throw a tantrum in front of the store, because I want CANDY and I want it NOW, DARN IT! Except maybe instead of candy, I want new furniture, that really cute skirt I saw at Dillard’s and a day at the spa.

I think it is important for frugality bloggers to remind their readers that they feel like this too, sometimes! I always appreciate it when one of my Frugal Heroes does a post on something that they find hard, or that they had a bad week. It reminds me that we are all human, and we all have days when it just seems like too much.

When these funks come over me, there are a few things that help me:

• My Comfort Drawer- I read about this in Simple Abundance when I was in college, and have had one ever since. The Comfort Drawer is a drawer full of goodies that you only turn to when you’ve had it. This is something I build up as things are on super sale- currently in mine is some very fancy bath stuff I found, unopened, at a thrift store, some chocolate, a book that I got at the Friends of the Library sale that I’m saving for a yucky day, and a few mud mask samples and other girlie goodies.
  
• Reminding myself of what I have because of our frugalness. We could not have had our house, gone to grad school, or had me stay at home without extreme thrift! We toured Europe and will be going to a wedding in an exotic local- even though we found other sources of income for the exotic wedding, we could not have said yes to it without our thrift.
  
• Like the frugal hacks article advised- take a nap, have a snack. Hungry and tired do weird things to your mind.
  
• I’m always looking for fancy stuff on markdown at the store to pull out at times like this. It’s hard to fill deprived when you’re having an appetizer made with super fancy cheese.
  
• I’ll admit it- currently we’re frugal because we *choose* to be, not because we *have* to be. That makes it much easier for me to do this- but occasionally, when we’re experiencing frugal burnout, we go ahead and do something nice- a nice meal out, a day trip…we don’t give in often, but sometimes it’s just what we need. What’s the point of saving all that money if you never, ever spend a dime of it? But we have to be careful of this one. We’ve had “eating out for one night” turn into “scrapping the menu and eating out each day for a week and a half.”
  
• Of course, when we started, we were frugal because we *had* to be. Times like that we’d go load up on books at the library, or go to the free museum that was in our area. Finding something free to do- and getting out of the house- can work wonders.
  In those *HAVE to be frugal* days, reminding ourselves of what we were being frugal for helped a bunch. That 99 cent 20 pound bag of potatoes got OLD, let me tell you, but repeating the mantra “We will be able to buy a house/go to school/go on a trip in the next few years instead of paying off debts” helped a lot. Also, reviewing goals helps. It's easier to save when you have a specific goal. Since our goals evolve, it's important to review. We once wanted to save for a down payment on a house. Now we have a house, so a new goal is to pay off the house and have x amount in savings. We can do it!
  
  What do you do for your frugal burnout? What makes you just want to give up, already? What stops you?

...more Frugal Friday enteries here!