Knowledge
Knowledge is another key frugality that perhaps doesn't spring first to mind when somebody asks you how you live within your means.
You can increase your frugal power by learning how- how to do things, make things, sell things, and how to get by without. How to be charitable when you don't have much money. Learning new skills is an inflation proof, tax free, frugal tool.
Learn Who- who in your area has goods and services for the best prices, has goods or skills you can learn from or barter with, who online offers great frugal tips, who of your friends supports your frugal efforts, and who encourages you to be a spendthrift, who is having a great sale this week?.
Learn What: what is a good base price (Traditional Medicinals or Good Earth Teas for around 2.00 a box?), what's on sale, what has a good resale value (we look for these things at thrift shops and yard sales and other used sources, and resell some items at a consignment store, and some online), what to substitute when you're out of one ingredient.
When: Learn when things are in season, when they typically go on sale, when the cost of an item has nothing to do with its value, when to cut your losses, and when it pays to spend a little more up front and when it doesn't.
Why: why a temporary convenience can cost more than we realize, why it's important not to make frugality a misery (and how you can make it a joy), why you cannot buy the better you.
And remember that:
Before you can properly consider and apply what you have in your hand, you just may need to examine what you have in your heart. Without a spirit of contentment, we can never truly achieve a gracious and cheerful frugality. Without that pleasure in economy as a fine art, we cannot expect to be able to see all the possibilities in those things we do have in our hands.
And without that strength of character that makes possible cheerful self-denial, all our attempts at frugality are merely ash and dust in the eye.
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