Living on a budget? How trendy! Frugal bloggers live on the cheap, by choice
This article is more than 7 years oldThe countless people who document their thrifty lifestyles give readers with money woes emotional support – but they don’t often deal with true poverty
On Sunday mornings, Katie practices the same ritual: she sits down on her couch in Toronto with her laptop and a cup of tea, pulls the receipts from her purse and makes a tally: “Groceries: $55.90. Petrol: $43.10. Hospital parking: $0. Total Spend: $99.” Then she hits publish and shares her weekly spending with the world.
Katie, a single mother of two adopted children with special needs, has to keep track of her money. Multiple surgeries over the past year have left her paralyzed from hip to knee, unable to work her healthcare job and saddled with between $15,000 and $20,000 CAD of debt. Once government assistance kicks in, her budget for the year will be just under $17,000.
To help her cope with the intense financial pressure, Katie maintains a blog called Notes From The Frugal Trenches.
The near-daily dispatches, which include money-saving hacks (make your own cleaning products and dog food), anecdotes from the free outings she takes with her kids (the park, the pool) and the realities of living with a disability (lots of hospital parking bills), are written in the positive tone of someone who can’t afford to be discouraged. Most posts end with optimistic sentiments such as: “But in all honesty it’s OK to have to go without,” or “Here’s to a week of no non-essentials!”
“[The blog] feels like free therapy,” says the mom in her mid-30s who doesn’t want her last name used to protect her children’s privacy. “It’s really helpful in looking back and remembering I can do it.”
Frugal bloggers range from suburban mothers, to a mohawked man named J Money with a site called Budgets are $exy.Katie is one of the countless people who document their thrifty lifestyles on sites with names like Suddenly Frugal, Frugal Babe and The Frugal Mom. Some have hundreds of thousands of readers and go on to ironically monetize their frugality through ads, book deals and TV appearances, while others stick to sharing coupons. The bloggers range from suburban mothers to a mohawked man named J Money with a site called Budgets are $exy.
While most frugal blogs can’t offer professional expertise, they arguably do something more important: give readers with money woes emotional support and a sense of community. But unlike Katie, they don’t often deal with true poverty. Most are written by middle-class people who either fell into debt, are saving for an ambitious goal or prefer a minimalist lifestyle.
In 2014, Liz and her husband, Nate, decided to save 71% of their salaries to buy a home in the countryside and escape the nine-to-five rat race.
“We realized if we don’t change something we’re going to wake up and be 50 still working in cubicles,” she said. “We really wanted to take a risk and find a different path.” This May they moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a farm on 66 acres of wooded land in Vermont, a transition she documented on a blog called Frugalwoods. Liz, who doesn’t share her last name for privacy reasons, writes posts such as “Frugalize Your Groceries,” filled with “my time is now entirely my own” type platitudes and bright photos of farm fresh produce. (She also refers to her dog as “Frugal Hound” and to their eight-month-old daughter as “Babywoods”.)
After a few years without restaurants, to-go coffees, haircuts and new clothes, “The Frugalwoods” have now settled into a mode of spending they call “luxurious frugality”. “We do everything we want,” says Liz, who works as a freelance writer and whose husband is a software engineer. “We cook great meals, we entertain our friends, we participate in hobbies … but we alway ask ourselves: ‘Is buying this thing going to facilitate our long-term goals?’”
While Liz makes it a habit to regularly remind herself how fortunate she is, Katie still worries certain frugal blogs glamorize poverty. “So many people are masquerading as needing to stick with a budget,” she says of those who save to achieve a goal rather than out of necessity. “But what they’re not able to portray ... are the horrific emotions, the psychological challenges and the mental health impact of true poverty.”
Katie says she supports anyone who downsizes by choice, but it irks her when bloggers don’t acknowledge that their chosen frugality is a luxury. “Cutting out $7 a day at Starbucks is a wonderful thing to do,” she says. “But when you have to cut out necessities it’s much more challenging.”
Some frugal bloggers equate a “simple life” with quality products low-income people can not afford. Take Leah Ingram, for example, who started the blog Suddenly Frugal right before the housing bubble burst in 2008 and she could no longer live off her home equity. “I buy everything from stores with lifetime guarantees,” she says. “I bought an expensive winter coat at LL Bean eight years ago and they’ve replaced the coat twice.”
Though most frugal blogs might not help readers escape poverty, certified financial planner Lauren Lyons Cole says they can demystify money issues for the average person. “A lot of people hate math,” she says. “If you’re connecting with someone and you relate to their story ... you can learn what you need to do by accident.” Lyon Coles adds that while the financial industry “has a vested interest in keeping finances complicated”, bloggers prove that saving money can be simple.
Katie isn’t interested in giving financial advice on her blog. Though she is quick to point out that her university education and steady employment record make her more fortunate than most low-income people, her Frugal Trenches entries focus on the actual experience of being forced to live on very little money.
In addition to the good moments, such as family trips to the park and friends who drop off food baskets, she blogged about a recent trip to the food bank, the prohibitive costs of school trips and how she now sleeps on the couch in order to rent her bedroom to an international student.
“There’s little romance in poverty,” she writes on her blog. “It isn’t not being able to afford vacations or expensive yarns, it is about worrying where the next meal will come from, or how your child’s medication will be paid for and whether you could skip groceries to fill that script.”
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