Posted on 12/28/2023 1:15:18 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Everyone always has new hacks and tips on how to save money. But it isn’t necessary to reinvent the wheel to change your financial situation. Instead, you can look to the frugal living tips from the Great Depression that a lot of our grandparents used.
The Great Depression from 1929 to 1939, was the gravest economic downtown in U.S. history. The stock market crashed; the unemployment rate reached new heights; and industrial production was severely impacted.
During the Depression, everyone had to learn how to scrimp and save and there’s a lot we can learn from that era today. Even if you’re not in dire straits, following frugal tips from the Great Depression can help you cut your expenses and save money.
That said, here are 27 great depression frugal living tips and ideas we can all learn from:
1. Make your own soap
2. Wear clothes more than once before washing
3. Keep warm with a hot water bottle at night
4. Learn a few sewing skills
5. Do all your errands one day a week or less
6. Track your spending
7. Make a herb garden
8. Cook with leftovers
9. Look through the pantry before going to the store
10. Purchase a whole chicken
11. Eat less meat
12. Buy reusable products
13. Start a vegetable garden
14. Invest in quality
15. Upcycle furniture instead of buying
16. Buy things second hand
17. Make your own cleaning products
18. Share with your neighbors
19. Learn how to store and preserve produce
20. Learn to DIY around the house
21. Use less electricity
22. Relax by candlelight
23. Just a dab will do ya
24. Use things up before replacing
25. Go to restaurants less often
27. Make payments in cash
Details at link. :)
I’m male, when a man is single you would be surprised how comfortable shoes, favorite shirts, bath towels, and a lot of other things never really wear out.
Gay State Conservative wrote: “My parents,both children of the Depression (both grew up in slums),talked about their early years of marriage and how difficult they were. My Dad used to say “we didn’t have a pot to pi$$ in or a window to throw it out of”.”
My parents too. Mom started housekeeping with a single cast iron skillet. I used it to make cornbread last night.
My parents planned to run off and get married on a friday night. That afternoon, my Dad’s boss called him in along with another man and told them he was letting them go, not because of their work. He had to cut two men and they were the only two in the work gang that weren’t married. My Dad’s boss was his father.
Dad hadn’t told him of their wedding plans. I asked him if he told his Dad he was getting married that night and he said he didn’t want to tell his Dad because of how that would sound. And, he said, I knew I’d find work. Which he did a couple of days later.
I'm with you. My wife and I use a credit card for random regular spending. We never go past our weekly budget for it. And I pay it off weekly. In the course of a year we get back about $500 to $600.
Of course, that's not enough of a reward to offset bad spending habits if a credit card increases spending. So it should be a person by person decision.
I’m still wearing the first pair on a regular basis for work. The other two haven’t left their original boxes.
28. Mine bitcoin using your neighbor’s electricity line.
Once you process that venison, those plastic Walmart and dollar store bags make for good freezer bags if you double wrap them (or even triple wrap them).
Yup...The Greatest Generation.Boys and girls growing up in very hard,frightening,times only to find at age 20 that they had to fight to save civilization. And then they went on to build “Western Society”...a society that only 50 years earlier nobody would have even dreamed of seeing.
For many small appliances this is true plus they weren't made to be taken apart to be fixed.
For larger appliances there is a law of diminishing returns. I fixed the dryer three separate times, replacing the heating coil, the drum rollers and the drum belt all for under $150 total. The dryer is 25+ years old and owes it's continued life to EBay. A new replacement would cost way more than the original even with repair costs added.
Yep. Our goodwill at the lake has some really cool stuff most of the time.
Agreed. And #22. Relax by candlelight. Candles are expensive. You could probably run an LED bulb for a year on what a candle cost.
I just got back from a grocery trip. One lady had a “hack”. After she rang up her groceries at the self-checkout, she pressed pay now, and grabbed the bags and left without inserting a card or any money. I tried calling her attention to it, thinking she was an honest person, but she kept right on walking out the door! I alerted the attendant, but all she did was clear the register for the next customer. She said she has to do this pretty often, but didn’t specify how often. Anyone want to guess why prices keep going up? It’s because of dishonest folks like that woman, and crooks like Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
When using cash they should keep receipts to track spending too.
I hate it when I have , say, $50 in cash on me and in two days I have $15 and scratch my head and wonder where the 35 went. HA
Anybody with a couple hundred square feet of yard to spare can raise chickens (for eggs, no rooster needed), rabbits (for meat), and Jerusalem artichokes*/sunchokes for carbs for very little money/effort and dramatically reduce your food bill (not to mention your dependence on Piggly Wiggly). No skill and very little money needed.
*Parboil before cooking or they’ll give you “the wind.”
We put iron-on patches on tears in our jeans.
Today they buy then torn. Go figure.
11. Eat less meat? In the depression meat was the cheapest thing on the market. People had STEAK for morning, noon and night! That is how cheap it was! But many had no job to buy that cheap meat.
Then FDR decided to get the price up by buying up millions of head of cattle and hogs, shooting and burying them.
Ten years later the Dems were begging ranchers and farmers to increase beef and hog production for the war effort.
https://footnote.wordpress.ncsu.edu/2020/08/14/plowing-under-cotton-and-killing-pigs-8-14-2020/
https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farming-in-the-1930s/crops/culling-the-herds/
Great movie. “Ya got no class, kid!”
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