Being Frugal

 

My wife and I have been debt free for twenty years and are thankful that we had the common sense to deny ourselves things while we paid that debt off.

We still use a credit card to buy stuff but we pay it off before we accrue any interest.  Our credit card is a Delta AmEx card so we get frequent flyer mileage as well.  To date, we have over 300,000 frequent flyer points.

We, as mentioned before, only buy what we need not what we want.  We buy, year old vehicles every ten years that have been leased for a huge reduction in price but still almost new.

We don't smoke nor do we drink alcohol which saves us a ton of money while maintaining good health.

We buy quality so that our purchases will last a long time rather than having to be replaced like computers every 3-5 years.

It is not difficult to live like we do and we deny ourselves very little because we have changed our lifestyle and simply do not need as much, but we do enjoy ourselves and are very content with what we have.

We live in East TN which helps with a lower cost of living.  While our location is not like NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, we are not missing the negative stuff that those larger cities provide like traffic congestion, smog, long lines, and crime.