I didn’t sign up for this!
What do you do when despite all of your best efforts to scrimp and save and make the most out of each and every little thing you have, your spouse, roommate, child, pool boy, mistress (hey, who am I to judge who lives under your roof?) may simply not understand your frugal nature.
When that happens (and it will if it hasn’t already), how do the frugal deal with the backlash? Is it possible to live frugally while being surrounded by friends and family who are of the mind set that they should be able to get what they want when they want it?
I know you can’t even get them to put the toilet seat down, but it is possible to bend their wills toward the frugal – even if it is just a smidgen now and then. In fact, there are frugal ideas that can be incorporated into your collective lives without their knowledge so that the wasteful ways of the uninitiated members of your frugal household are lessened.
Children are much easier to work with (go figure), because the easiest way to make them understand frugality is by using the powerful lesson of money. For every dollar they help you save for example, you might give them x number of ‘house credits’. A frugal house credit is a unit of exchange – think home currency – that your kids can save up for things they want.
How you work your house credits is up to you, but I suggest involving your children in the creation of the incentive program in order to bring them around more quickly. If they get to pick the incentives (from very small to substantial) they are more likely to begin paying attention to those small details that can end up saving you big. They may even surprise you by finding new ways to save money and live more frugally!
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