I have gone through a lot of phases in my life but when it comes to finance I lean towards the more frugal side. I am hyper aware of the amount of money coming into my account, how much I am saving each month and the breakdown of the individual costs. As an example at the worse of my frugality I was saving around 60% of my income and “living” (if you could call it that) on the rest. People often talk about the benefits of living this way but there are much fewer posts about the drawbacks, so I thought I would shine a light on the downsides that I discovered while living this way.

Missed Opportunities

One of the main downsides I noticed was a reluctance to book holidays. Holidays cost a lot of money and in the mind of a frugal me - that money could be put into savings to put me closer to whatever I was saving for at the time. The problem is once one goal was hit there was always the next goal, so there was never a decision made to book a holiday. That led to over 10 years of not leaving the country because of that innate desire to save money. Holidays are not the only place this can affect; meeting up with friends, going for a meal at a fancy restaurant, and anything where it was a case of weighing up saving money against spending on an experience were always hard decisions to make when you become ingrained with a frugal mindset.

Not Buying What You Need

This is one of the biggest issues frugal living can lead to if you take it too far. This also isn’t just buying new stuff that you don’t have, but replacing items that have gone long past the point of return. As an example I have run around 800 kilometers in my current running shoes, the wear on the soles is ridiculous but I put off ordering replacements for them until last night because of the frugal mentality I have. Another example was clothes and towels; I would use them to the point where they weren’t fit for use before replacing them. Then even for clothes I would keep them past that as lounging clothes for when I was at home. Restricting your purchases to the point of not spending when you should is a serious problem with the frugal mindset and something you always have to be cautious of.

Not Investing in Good Products

Buy cheap, buy twice is the usual saying brought up for this, and it is true but it is only a part of it. One huge area that I changed up recently and cursed myself for not doing sooner was my skin care routine. Previously I would grab the cheapest supermarket brand face cleansers and just use that. It was terrible for my skin, I would get breakouts and my skin would feel horrible and dry. Thankfully I made the switch to Clinique’s product line around 9 months ago and I can say the difference is night and day. Generally an increase in price is going to increase the quality, making items last longer and return better results. Obviously there is a limit where there becomes diminishing returns and you are paying for a brand more than quality so don't just go for the most expensive products. When you are focused on saving every penny you can actually end up buying the same item multiple times not realising if you just put more money upfront into a quality product it would last you the long term and actually save you money.

Less Value for your Time

I have spoken briefly before about how time is one of the greatest resources we have at our disposal, especially since it is finite. When you are trying to avoid spending money it can lead you to doing jobs which you could otherwise have done for you giving you more time to enjoy life. Cleaners and Gardeners are one example of this. Another is travel, you may choose to take a megabus because it costs less than the train, even though it will take 3 hours longer. If there is one area we should always be maximising it is the time we have available to us, frugal living can act in direct opposition to this if you are not careful.

Less Enjoyment

The final point I have for you is how frugal living can impact your levels of enjoyment. By being overly picky about what you do with your time in order to maximise your savings you can let life go by without really investing in your enjoyment. In addition it can also become lonely if you isolate yourself from others in order to save those pennies. You may avoid holidays, buying that nice car you always wanted, choosing a rundown apartment to live in rather than that luxury suite you saw since month on month you can save more and countless other cost cutting ideas that in the long run will hinder your levels of happiness. Our mental health is extremely important, and frugal living if not monitored can definitely have a negative impact if we are not careful.

To Finish Up

I am not saying don’t be careful where you spend your money. I just wanted to write this as a person who went too far with living frugally that it started to impact me more negatively than I realised. You only get one life and you should enjoy it as much as you can while you are here, so treat yourself to the nice things. If you have worked hard enough that you can afford them, then you deserve to enjoy yourself.