Meet My Friends: Why be Frugal?

I mentioned in one of my early posts that I am so blessed to have an amazing group of women that I call friends. God has gifted each of them in different ways. I am excited to share them with you ... but only for a day! :)

I probably would define my friendship with Alisha as a “blog friendship.” Although she lives in my hometown, we have gotten to know each other through our blogs and Facebook. We have kiddos about the same age, so we have gone through similar experiences at the same time. Alisha is an awesome manager of her home. She often writes about recipes she is making or activities she does with her kiddos, but her ability to spend frugally and wisely in regard to groceries, home products, and personal products is a huge challenge to me. She blogs at “Save More—Give More,” where she mentions her goal of spending $200 a month on groceries and $0 a month on toiletries and household items. That’s right, I said $0!!! In this post, she is sharing why it is important for us to be frugal, and she will be sharing more tips and tricks in the months to come.

Why Be Frugal?

People have asked me why they should try to save money, especially if they’re in a place where they don’t need to save money. To me, the answer is because it isn’t their money to begin with. Consider what God says in Psalm 50:9-10: “I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.”

Often times as Christians we think we’re suppose to give God 10% and then the remaining 90% is ours to spend as we please. This self-centered (and many times legalistic) mindset causes us to lobby, justify, and even fight over how the 90% is spent in our marriages. With over 2,300 verses in the Bible about money, it’s clear that God wants to be involved with 100% not just 10% of our money. God doesn’t need that 10%, just as the other 90% isn’t ours that we’ve earned and deserve.

Once we see ourselves as simply stewards of whatever amount God chooses to give us each month, we need to seek the Lord’s guidance on what He would have us do with that money and how we should spend it. We are given what we have to meet the needs of our families and the needs of others. When you consider that a mere $.25 can provide a meal for a child overseas (quite possibly the only meal they will get that day) or that $5 is considered a good daily salary for someone providing for their family in a third-world country, you quickly realize that the money we “waste” on seemingly little things isn’t such a small amount. All of a sudden, a candy bar at checkout is three meals in Uganda; and more practically, paying $2 for a pound of strawberries (instead of price matching for $.88) becomes four meals you can provide for someone else, all while giving your family the same item you had planned to.

When we think of our money as God’s money given to us to glorify God, we have an entirely new perspective on what we spend money on as well as how we buy the things we do. This is true for big items like housing and transportation, as well as the smallest things, like the above mentioned strawberries. Saving money changes from something only poor people do because they have to, to something we should all do as wise managers of our households as well as managers of the money God gives us.