One of the rewards of living frugally, and I’ve spoken about it before, is that when you really need a good evening you’ve got some money sitting around to do it. While making homemade lentil soup, watching a Redbox movie, and just enjoying each others’ company may not sound like the most exciting evening usually, this type of living produces “margin” in your life. When I use the word margin, I mean breathing room. It’s no fun living life when you are extended to the margins and there is no room left to have any fun. Living life frugally gives you some extra space. When your budget is not overextended and you aren’t living in distressed conditions, you have some wiggle room. My husband and I decided we would leave our teenage twin girls at home so they could watch a movie and we would go out shopping with our three year old son. We spent a little while shopping in Target and then relaxed for a while in Starbucks. Starbucks is generally a frivolous and unnecessary purchase in our world, but the way we live makes it possible even with only one income. Our son ate an entire donut and some chocolate milk and then helped us take some Starbucks coffee grounds for our compost pile. While in Target, I found some great deals on Kashi Cinnamon Harvest cereal (on sale for $2.75 per box and then combined with a $3 off two coupon!) and Cascadian Farms Organic Chocolate Chip granola bars (on sale for $2.50), and at CVS got some Nature Made vitamins (on sale and combined with a great $7 off Nature Made reward coupon). This is what an enjoyable evening is like in my world.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 12:31 am and is filed under Simple Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.