The Psychology of Being Frugal

In trying to make the background to this short, I'm going to use a bullet point method to get you up to speed:

• I haven't written in a while because I've been super busy.
• I've been super busy because I am in grad school full time (5 courses, 15 credit hours), and working part time (22 hours per week), and there's the whole "being a mom and wife" thing.
• Because of this, my individual income is now about half of what it was.

So that's where I am today.

Because of these recent developments, I've of course had cut way back.  If I was frugal before, now I'm probably edging on the line of "cheap". 

However, being the glass-half-full, optimistic person that I generally am, I hate looking at things in a negative light.  It is depressing and very limiting.  For example, I hate looking at things and thinking "I can't afford ____."  Instead I like to spin it like "I am choosing not to by ______ so that I can instead get _____." 

I think for me, that's a huge part of the psychology of living a more frugal lifestyle.  I like to frame it as though I don't HAVE to, but that I choose to.  In that sense, it empowers me and helps me make better decisions and also to feel good about those decisions.