Coach Carson

  • About
    • About Coach
    • Start Here
    • Contact
    • Charitable Mission of Coach Carson
  • Learn
    • Archive
    • Getting Started
    • Rentals & Landlording
    • Financial Independence & Early Retirement
    • Do More Deals
    • Investor Profiles
    • Entrepreneurship & Business
    • Personal Productivity & Growth
    • Travel & Life
  • Listen
  • Courses
  • Top Tools
    • Cash Back Reward Cards
  • Free Toolkit

Happiness: An Unexpected Benefit of Frugality

By Chad Carson 6 Comments Filed Under: Financial Independence & Early Retirement

0shares

 

If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I think frugality is important.  By frugality I do not mean painfully depriving yourself of happiness now so that someday you’ll be more happy.  I also don’t mean you have to live in a tent or eat rice and beans your entire life.

No. Frugality can make you happier now and happier later.  It is simply a keen awareness of financial choices and their consequences.  A frugal person makes choices with their own values and ambitions in mind.

The Opposite of Frugality

The opposite of frugality is unconscious financial choice-making.  This happens when your values, your goals, and your choices are influenced unconsciously by tradition, popular trends, or deep-pocketed advertisers.

When your decisions are unconscious, you may want to succeed financially but those external forces really control your financial destiny.

No Frugality Formulas

A frugal person could be someone who spends $40,000 per year or someone who spends $200,000 per year.  There are no specifically right or wrong spending amounts. People and life are too complicated for those types of formulas.

Regardless of what frugality looks like, it is essential to achieve an early financial independence (I prefer this term to retirement).  The math is simple.  Your savings rate determines in large part how long it will take you to reach a destination of financial independence.

And frugality, or deliberate spending, can help you reduce your expenses while you work to increase your income. This powerful combination leads to a huge savings gap, quick wealth building, and earlier than normal financial independence.

Rental Property Analysis

A course by Coach Carson that teaches you how to run the numbers so that you can confidently analyze and buy profitable rental properties. It also includes Coach’s rental analysis spreadsheet.
Get the Course

More to Frugality Than Meets the Eye

If we left it at that, frugality would be a pretty amazing financial concept, wouldn’t it?

There is no doubt of the long-term benefit of frugality, but there is another unexpected short-term benefit as well.

During those years of frugal decisions and climbing towards financial independence, a very interesting thing happens.  While the savings are piling up and the net worth continues to grow, the frugal person realizes that he is happier than he has ever been.

Really? Is that possible? What about the great American dream that more is better?  Happiness comes from a brand new i-phone, a big house, a new car, and expensive vacations, doesn’t it?

In my experience, at least, frugality heightens your awareness of what really matters. Excessive purchases can be distracting from other priorities, like exercise, sleep, family time, personal growth, and travel/exploration.

This distraction is especially true when the excessive purchases are big, like cars and houses. These purchases too often come attached to recurring payments that chain you to a spend-work cycle.  This excess spending certainly kills your wealth, but it also ensures that you must keep working the highest-paying job possible to support the habit, even if that job doesn’t make you happy.

A Shorter Mountain to Climb

So it usually dawns on a frugal person that he really doesn’t need to accumulate as much money as he originally thought to be safe, secure, and happy.  He has validated this conclusion with experience. And this means that he can reach financial independence even faster.

It’s almost a cruel reality.  The non-frugal person spends more, saves less, works longer at an undesirable job (or at a good job under undesirable terms), takes longer to reach financial goals, and is at best no more happy than the frugal person along the way.

I am an unapologetic fan of the practical and philosophical benefit of frugality.  If the concept resonates with you, then join me on the get-rich and get-happy frugality bandwagon.

I think you’ll enjoy the ride;)

What do you think? Can frugality make you happier now? I’ll admit that I’m biased, and I’m sure there are other sides to this argument. I’d welcome feedback in the comments below.

Get My Free Real Estate Investing Toolkit!

Enter your email address and click "Get Toolkit"

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

NO Spam. Unsubscribe anytime with 1 click. Powered by ConvertKit
0shares

Tagged With: financial independence, frugality, happiness, savings rate

Comments

  1. Brittany Keesee says

    October 13, 2015 at 9:01 am

    Loved this article!

    Reply
    • Chad Carson says

      October 14, 2015 at 4:24 pm

      Thank you Brittany! Glad you found it helpful.

      Reply
  2. Toyya says

    October 20, 2015 at 10:17 pm

    I hear you!!! Just ordered my Republic Wireless phone. Thanks for the tip!!!

    Reply
    • Chad Carson says

      October 21, 2015 at 4:51 pm

      Ha, Ha. Good for you, Toyya. Save that money!

      Reply
  3. Shirley says

    April 12, 2020 at 2:58 am

    On point Coach! I’ve just realized that I’ve been living frugally for most of my adult life. And for me, it’s the best way to live. I don’t feel deprived at all. Instead, I feel confident and empowered knowing that I am taking charge of my finances and going where I want to go. Instead of just blindly following the herd.

    With this frugal lifestyle, I’ve been able steadily invest in real properties, while still enjoying some luxuries that I choose (e.g., vacations with my family). I hope to be financially independent by the age of 40 and to continue to pursue what matters most.

    Thanks for the great articles Coach! More power to you!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Guide to the Best Wealth Building Assets - Coach Carson says:
    November 10, 2015 at 5:01 am

    […] a few sacrifices, I can assure you the path is worth it.  You might even find, as I have, that life gets even better once you make the so-called […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search box

Guide to Financial Independence


ABOUT COACH

Chad Coach Carson
About Me


How Can I Help You?


GET STARTED

RETIRE EARLY

DO MORE DEALS

TOOLS OF TRADE

HOUSE HACKING

LANDLORDING

FINANCING

BE YOUR BEST

Let’s Get Social!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Products I Like

May contain affiliate links (Disclosure)

Use personal or business spending to earn cash back or travel rewards. Here are my favorite deals.


Online management software that I use. Useful when you scale your self-management to more properties.


 

Free software to track your net worth & portfolio in real time. Fun & intuitive to use.

Top Posts

  • The Best Real Estate Investing Strategy
  • How to Pick the Ideal Location For Investment Properties – a Comprehensive Guide
  • How to Run the Numbers For Rental Properties – Back-of-the-Envelope Analysis
  • The 35 Best Niches For Real Estate Investing (& How to Choose Yours)
  • Enroll in Free 7-Day Course – How to Get Started (or Restarted) With Real Estate Investing
  • The Baby Steps to Your First Rental, Flip, or Wholesale Property (6 Case Studies)

Top Resources

I have 85 recommended tools for you to become better as a real estate investor. My first priority is helping you, my reader, to learn and improve. These tools and resources helped me and I'm hopeful they will help you too.

Check out these tools and resources here: 85+ Recommended Tools & Resources For Real Estate Investors

Affiliate Disclosure

I recommend books, tools, and other resources from time to time using links within my articles. In some cases these links are affiliate links. This means that if you click through and purchase, my company will receive a commission on the sale. These commissions help pay the bills around here (and avoid the need for spammy ads). But keep in mind that I only recommend a product or service if I’ve used it and personally believe in it. And I’ll recommend something that’s good whether it has an affiliate link or not. My first priority is helping you, my reader, to learn and improve.

  • About
  • Learn
  • Listen
  • Courses
  • Top Tools
  • Free Toolkit

Contact ·Copyright © 2021 · Disclaimer & Privacy·