Frugal is a word that I use to describe myself. We live a very frugal lifestyle, I blog about being frugal and many people would describe me as frugal. However, I never really had a concrete definition of frugality. Since I was teaching a class at church on frugality, I thought it would be wise to have an understanding of what it acutally means. I really liked the definition I found:

Frugality- The practice of acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner and resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services to achieve a longer term goal. (Wikipedia)

This definition of frugality explains  our lifestyle in one sentence! I was really amazed at how dead on it was for us.

“The practice of acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner” The first thing that comes to mind when I read this is budgeting! When you are on a budget you are restraining yourself from excessive and haphazard spending. We definitely do approach goods and services in a restrained manner; shopping is not a hobby for us (you can’t spend money if you don’t go!). We truly evaluate wants versus needs and give in to very few wants and those we do give into we research for the  best price and save up for them. And as far as services are concerned, my husband cuts his own hair, I rarely get my hair cut at a salon (my husband will trim it for me), I do all of our ironing, and we change our own oil (just to name a few!)

“and resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services” Instead of going and purchasing items the minute we want or need them we will evaluate the things that we already have to see if something else can be used or made into the item that we need. An example of this, I needed a bedskirt for our guest bed and instead of going and spending $15-20 for a new one I took a queen size flat sheet and made it into a bedskirt for the full bed! Another example, we wanted a fleece pillowcase for our body pillow for fall/winter (we sleep on fleece sheets). I took a fleece throw that we weren’t using and made it into a pillowcase, it cost nothing and we’ll get many years of wear out of it! We haven’t completely mastered the resourcefulness aspect of frugality because it does require thinking and creativity but we are getting better at it!

“to achieve a longer term goal” For us a longer term goal (really goals) is the reason we live a frugal life! When we married we didn’t have much money but we agreed on two goals for our life; the first was that I am going to stay home with our children and the second was to own and home and have it paid off in 15 years. By living frugally throughout college and then maintaining our standard of living when John David got a job we were able to purchase a home with a 20% down payment and are making extra principal payments every month. Now that I am expecting there is no question whether or not I will stay home, I will and since we solely live off of his income we have no worries that we are going to make it. If we didn’t live frugally there is no way that we could already own a home and we couldn’t make it on my husband’s income alone so I would have to work. These goals are why we live frugally!

I hope this gives you a better understanding of exactly what frugality is!