There is a difference between blowing money on car accessories for girls, or being frugal to reduce unnecessary spending to free up extra money each month, to just being plain old cheap. While sure it is good to adjust expenses so that you can use the extra money for more important areas such as building an emergency fund or saving for retirement, but being cheap is just embarrassing for those around you, let alone for you. By making a few adjustments you can live a frugal lifestyle and avoid any association with being a cheapskate.
Tip Appropriately
It doesn’t matter if you were in the service industry at one point or not, you know they work on tips, so if you receive good service tip 20%, if it was better, give more. If you’ve ever gone out with friends and the bill comes out and you decide to just divide up evenly there are those that always leave the tip out and it leaves those collecting the money to throw in a few extra dollars to ensure that a proper tip is given for the evening. Otherwise, you could go around the table and ask what each person left to try and call out the cheap ones. A little rule of thumb, if you can afford to go out to eat, you can afford to tip. If not, stay home.
Buy the Necessities
For the longest time my father-in-law claimed that after his phone died he would go back to not having a smart phone because the “free” phone is no longer around and the cost seems so high, even though you can pay by the month now. Maybe it was just a ploy, but we ended up buying him one for Christmas, as he uses his phone everyday so there was no way he could go without a smart phone and go back to an outdated computer for social media updates.
Use a Credit Card Responsibly
Whether there are some that do not have a credit card, or are afraid to put charges on there, using a credit card can actually be smart, even to the point of making every purchase with a credit card, provided you can use it responsibly. If you can pay the whole statement balance by the due date, you can take advantage of not only no interest, but the rewards which could be points to redeem as gift cards, airline miles, or better yet, cashback, just on the purchases that you would be making anyways. It’s hard to pass up free money.
Use Uber/Lyft
Let’s face it, drunk driving is practically zero tolerance anymore, so there is no point in driving even if you are only having a few drinks, and with Uber and Lyft being so cheap these days, don’t you be cheap by not downloading the free app and storing your credit card for the $5-10 ride home from the bar that actually saves you $10,000 in fees if you would get popped for drunk driving otherwise.