Inside: Use these frugal living tips to help you save more money with minimalism.
A guest post by Miguel of The Simple Paradise
Are you looking to manage your spending habits and save more money with minimalism?
Minimalism is a great way to simplify your life and one of the side effects is saving money and living frugally.
Because you already attempt to accumulate less, minimalism makes frugal living an ideal way to live.
Minimalism also brings intentionality into your life. This helps you to create solid savings goals and live in a way that cuts costs in as many ways as possible!
Minimalism has helped me to change my spending habits and has allowed me to be much happier with less. I find my life is also much easier when I don’t have so many possessions to worry about.
I hope these minimalist money tips will help you to live a frugal life and save more money with minimalism!
How to Save More Money With Minimalism?
Minimalism in itself can never just ‘save you more money’.
It’s not a switch.
The key to saving more money with minimalism is the mindset that you develop when living with less.
When you embrace minimalism, this mindset should help you prioritize decluttering rather than spending and buying more things you don’t need.
Ultimately, the goal of developing a minimalist mindset is to start thinking before buying and becoming less impulsive.
We want to become more and more intentional with what we allow into our homes and lives.
You can do this by defining the type of minimalist lifestyle you want to live and spend according to the needs you have outlined.
Here are examples of a few different types of minimalist lifestyles:
- Nomad minimalist
- Minimalist with a family
- Moderate minimalist
- Extreme minimalist
Once you know what type of minimalist lifestyle you want to live, you can plan your frugal living goals accordingly.
Using a Minimalist Mindset to Save Money
In order to use a minimalist mindset to save more money with minimalism you need to practice developing some skills.
Here are the internal characteristics you will want to cultivate:
- Understanding needs vs wants
- Becoming content with less
- Finding happiness in loved ones and experiences, not possessions
- Developing more discipline
Frugal Living vs Minimalism
Although frugal living and minimalism are often interwoven, the two aren’t the same.
Frugal living is more about saving money by using various ways to spend less and live below your means.
Minimalism goes very well with frugal living because it can be a way to help you save.
However, minimalism is about simplifying your life and acknowledging that happiness doesn’t come from your possessions but from appreciating what you already have. Minimalism focuses on your experiences and enjoying time with loved ones.
By embracing minimalism, we hope to make our lives easier while also creating more space and time for what actually matters in our lives!
6 Frugal Tips to Help You Save More Money With Minimalism
1. Focus Your Spending on ‘Needs’
This seems very obvious but it’s something you’ll want to keep at the forefront of your mind when trying to save more money with minimalism.
It’s important to be intentional with shopping so that you’re buying things you need and will use rather than making impulse purchases.
The hope is that our money will no longer be going towards unnecessary shopping that drains all of our money each month.
This is also a time to reflect and brainstorm your spending pain points.
This means creating a budget and tracking your expenses to see where you tend to spend the most.
The point of this process is to identify where our money drains are and create a plan to cut back on spending in that area.
For example, in my life, I’ve spent way too much on random items from Amazon and on food delivery.
After checking my budget each month, it became obvious where my money was going.
And trust me, with some spending areas you may not even need to look at your budget to know where you spend the most.
You’ll already know!
All in all, you’ll want to create a plan to limit your spending on unnecessary categories each month and cut back your spending wherever possible.
Bills will be fixed expenses each month, but we want to attempt to save more on the categories we can control.
This starts with our minimalist mindset and behavior!
2. Audit Your Wardrobe Every 3-6 Months
Clothes shopping is a spending pain point for many people.
This is one of those areas you can expect a lot of people to overspend and consume more than they need.
That’s why I highly recommend anyone give a minimalist wardrobe a try!
I personally use a capsule wardrobe and it makes my life so much easier.
Here are some great benefits of creating a minimalist wardrobe:
- Save more money
- Gives you more time
- Less laundry
- Less decision fatigue
- Get ready faster in the morning
- Faster/easier packing for trips
The idea here is to downsize our wardrobe to wear what we enjoy and what we need in our personal and professional lives.
This is an excellent way to simplify your life and help you save more money with minimalism!
Once you have your wardrobe simplified, the idea is to audit your wardrobe every 3-6 months and see if you need to replace any clothing pieces.
This can be an opportunity to shop and get new clothes, but again we want to be intentional with our spending and have a plan to buy clothes that match our minimalist wardrobe.
With our minimalist wardrobe established, the goal is to never buy any clothes unless we need to replace items or change up our style.
This will save you tons of money and allow you to live way more frugally than you thought was possible.
3. Create a Minimalist Budget
As I mentioned above, you’ll want to create a minimalist budget in order to track your expenses.
This is vital to fix our overspending and find where we struggle the most.
Minimalism saves money but if we don’t know where we need to cut back and implement our frugal habits we may continue with our bad spending habits.
Here are steps to create a minimalist budget:
- Create custom categories
- Find a Budgeting method that works best for you (app, spreadsheet, printable, from scratch)
- Create a repeatable budgeting system
Once you’ve created your minimalist budget, you now have a tool to create intention with your spending and plan your savings goal for each month.
4. Learn to Meal Prep
Learning to meal prep can be a serious game changer for your health and your finances.
Meal prepping is one of the best ways to save more money with minimalism!
I’ve struggled with overspending on food for a while, but now that I have a better plan with my meal prepping, I’m able to save much more when I know what meals I’ll be eating each day.
However, if you’re like me, the temptation to order delivery or eat out is very strong if you don’t plan out your meals ahead of time.
I’m not perfect and still eat out, but when I plan my meals, I save a lot more than I would when I get lazy and order delivery.
The trick with eating healthier and meal prepping is to pick meals you enjoy that you can repeat easily. Then you combine this with setting your intention on what meal you’re gonna eat the day before.
This helps to simplify your week, save you money, and encourage you to eat higher quality foods.
When you know what meal you’ll have beforehand, this seems to ease the temptation of choosing something unhealthy.
Ultimately, if you’re able to meal prep and limit your dining out successfully, you’ll have mastered one of the best frugal money-saving weapons!
5. Audit Your Subscriptions
Another great frugal minimalist tip is to audit your subscriptions and cancel any recurring expenses you may be unaware of or have forgotten about.
This goes hand in hand with creating your budget because when we are forced to record all of our expenses, we want to catch any hidden expenses that we may not have even known were there.
Check your bank statements and brainstorm which subscriptions you have.
Next: Determine which subscription services you use and which ones you haven’t used. Once you determine which services you want to keep, cancel any subscriptions that you don’t use or need.
Even if your subscriptions are super cheap, in order to be frugal and save more money with minimalism, we want to cancel them and cut costs where we can.
6. Workout at Home
Just like our subscriptions, I recommend working out at home to save money unless you actually need the equipment at the gym.
Otherwise, find a way to work out at home and create a repeatable routine that you enjoy!
You can try minimalist workout routines and find which type of exercise works best for you. You don’t need any fancy equipment.
Here are some common minimalist workouts:
- HIIT workouts
- Bodyweight workouts
- Calisthenics
- Yoga or Pilates workouts
Working out at home can not only save you money each month, but it can also be a great way to stay in shape using minimal equipment depending on your exercise needs.
Do Minimalists Spend Less Money?
Minimalists absolutely spend less money and cut costs in all of the ways mentioned above.
These frugal living tips can save you anywhere from $100-$500 of your monthly budget!
What Are the Financial Benefits of Minimalism?
The financial benefits of minimalism include:
- Paying off debt faster
- Saving for large purchases
- Achieving financial freedom
See what a difference these frugal living tips can make in helping you to save more money with minimalism.
About Me: My name is Miguel and I’m a simple living and budget spreadsheet advocate! I have a degree in communications from Penn State and enjoy writing. I’ve been decluttering my life since 2018 and love everything simple living related. I aim to help you learn how to live a simple life, become intentional with your spending, and manage your money right!
You can find me at The Simple Paradise.
How will you save more money with minimalism? Let us know in the comments below.
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