Extreme Family Frugality

Financial planners shy away from using the word "budget," because the word invokes the demon of want. In short, going on a budget implies having to do without. While some forms of family frugality allow families to enjoy their vices with some limitations, one form of family frugality, strategic conservation, demands families to live in a completely new way for a limited time frame.

Strategic conservation involves completely shutting the family off from certain forms of spending for a specific amount of time. Families can keep their Internet and cable, but might do without it for a certain number of days, weeks, or months. Frugal families should experiment with monthly budgetary items to determine what they can and cannot live without. After turning the cable off for a whole month, a family might decide that paying more than $50 a month for television is not worth the time and peace they obliterate with the daily droning of a television set.

Electric Bill

You can change your electric bill. Switch to LED or CFL bulbs, change your air conditioner thermostat, and turn appliances off before you leave a room. You'll see an improvement; however, if you employ strategic conservation, you'll see a dramatic improvement. Turn all electrical appliances, save for the refrigerator, off after a certain hour at night, and you'll save a pretty good amount of money on the electric bill. Go even further by turning everything off for a whole weekend or a whole day each week and you'll be surprised at easy it is to conserve electricity for the non conservation periods.

Cable Bill

Turn your cable off for a month or two. You don't have to get rid of it forever, but you can save money for a month or two. You might decide not to put it back on. If you have a contract, you might be able to suspend your service for a certain amount of time. While you won't save money in the long term, you can take the money you've saved and put it into an account to earn interest.

Food Bill

Buying processed food is not cheaper than buying wholesome food, because processed food has fewer nutrients but more calories than wholesome food. Human beings have no biological need for noodles, soda pop, doughnuts, potato chips, hot dogs, sugar drink mixes, or anything that doesn't involve something that once grew on a plant or tree, or walked, or flew, or swam. We need meat, vegetables, water, and grains. A strategically conservative family will go a week or longer with no processed stuff. To enhance a frugal lifestyle without sacrificing too much, families can go without all that processed stuff for certain days of the week. It saves money and conserves proper waistlines.

All you need to do to be a strategic conservative is to be a strategic spender. Shy away from spending money without truly assessing whether it is worth what you pay for whatever it is you are getting. If you skip getting a manicure, you can determine just how miserable or not-so miserable your life will be after excluding that service. Do you even need that service, or can you live with skipping one or two trips to the nail salon?