by Laurie Childree

Created on: January 12, 2009   Last Updated: August 01, 2009

Living a frugal lifestyle has many advantages such as ensuring you have an emergency fund. This will keep you within your financial means. When you live within your means you pay attention to what you do 100% of the time and not just 50% of the time. It's easier to be frugal than you might think and the best part is that it doesn't require you to spend a lot of money.

While it is rather exhausting at first to live frugally as you attempt to change habits you didn't realize you had, after a while you develop new habits. After a while you won't realize that you are doing it. Examining each area of your life individually will help you to recognize areas where your expenses can be reduced and a savings no matter how small seen. The most important thing in living a frugal lifestyle is to remember that you have to continue living and not stop everything in an effort to save or you won't be living.

Reducing the amount spent on bills each month is a major part of living frugally. Simple things like going to a budget billing system for your utilities so you know how much the bill is going to be each month will help you to live a more frugal lifestyle. Once you have all of the bills under control and your budget set you are ready to truly become frugal.When you switch to budget billing you have to begin to pay more attention to the way that you use electricity so that you won't end up with a large bill when it comes time to settle up with the electric company.

Tracking expenses will help to live frugally as well. All you need is a tiny notebook to write everything down in and the willingness to get receipts from all of your purchases. The tiny notebook is so you can write down those expenses that you don't often get receipts for such as gas purchases you paid cash for and forgot to ask. When you get home copy them into a ledger and you begin to get an accurate picture of what you are seeing.

Get a piggy bank or simply clean out an old drink bottle and put all of your change in it at the end of the day. When you don't' spend your change you're living frugally through savings. Not all of it has to go but there is no need to carry all of your change around. When the jar gets full roll the change in it and put it into a savings account that you do not touch.

Clothes shopping can be done rather frugally rather simply. Take a look around your local thrift stores or consignment shops to find clothes for under $5 and up to $20 an item; some will still have

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