Are any aspies really frugal?

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Oh hon, is that what they told you at school? The catch is finding a job - there are lots of new graduates, many with masters' degrees in your field, and only a very finite supply of jobs. Don't go into debt if you don't have to!

I am very frugal, almost to the point of being cheap.

Put on some J.S. Bach and do the frugue to a fugue! (Only those of us who have achieved a certain age have heard of this dance. I had no idea how to spell it though!)

I'm very frugal, and hate owing anything. I walked to work for a year so I could save up enough money to buy a $14,000 car with cash. I also own my home, which is still being built piece by piece (my dad retired with Army Corp of Engineers, so he is building it). I still need flooring, some drywall, kitchen cabinets and counters, a kitchen sink, ac/heat unit, and the only interior door is on the bathroom. It's not the most comfortable place, but I own every bit of it, which is good, because I only make $600 a month!

Bestyrath-Your marriage sounds just like mine! My husband is the same way. Both of our cars are paid for, we pay off our credit card balances monthly, we rarely go out to eat. My husband does not even have a cell phone! We use all of our appliances until they are on the last leg. Oh, we have been together for almost 8 years, and I think he has purchased maybe 2 articles of clothing during that time! My husband has never been diagnosed with AS, but I have strong suspicions since our son has been diagnosed. Oh, my husband will eat leftovers long after I would!

The good thing is that I was raised by a single mother who was always a bargain shopper because she had to be. I think being frugal was ingrained in me. This is why my husband and I are pretty much on the same page. We often joke about who can be the cheapest! I love shopping at thrift stores and garage sales too.

We do splurge every once and awhile on going out to a nice restaurant or going on a short vacation. My husband is a computer engineer and does pretty well, so it is not that we don't have the money. We just like to see how much we can avoid spending! The good thing about it is that I can stay home with our son---I love my frugal husband!

that would be "The Frug" (as seen in Sweet Charity).

yeah, i'm frugal, i've learned to be after a life stuck with my psychotic, gambling money-pit of a mother. funny thing is, she grew up during the depression. i did not.
i consider it a sort of necessary training for the future i see for myself: living alone and having to get by on as little as possible. due to mental health issues, depression, and aspergers, my employment future will always be sketchy and precarious. as long as my basic needs and bills are paid, i have the internet, camera and means to take a road trip every so often (which i also do cheaply and enjoy it), i'm fine. i could probably get by alone on about $12 worth of food a week. i fix as much of my own things as possible. i've become a survivalist.

I'm with Rocky on this one, being frugal seems logical to me.

I don't work many hours and I'm on minimum wage so my income is stupidly low yet I've never had any debt, have 2 credit cards which I use regularly and pay off in full every single month (to help build up my credit rating, because my earnings sure as hell aren't going to do it for a while) and I hate to waste anything.

Almost all food that isn't fresh is absolutely fine once it goes out of date, some of it can be eaten months and even years after it goes out of date and it still looks and tastes the same, though fresh food is almost definitely a bad idea once it goes out of date. Dates on food are a legal requirement but their accuracy is often a joke, though that's a big (and potentially stomach churning, for some people) topic for another thread.

Even though I'm on a stupidly low income, somewhere in the vicinity of £4,000 (about $6,000) I do not struggle for anything, though this is partly down to still living at home.

I don't want to live at home forever and on my current wages at my horrible job I'll never be able to move out so I will be making a lot of changes and spending a lot more money, but I'll still not get myself into any unnecessary debt (a mortgage would be placed in the necessary pile) and always make sure that I have money put aside for when it might be needed.

I'll always be frugal, no matter how much I might earn in the future.

You make it sound like 5 pants and 5 shirts isn't a lot. I don't think I've ever owned that much clothing at one time. I've got two pairs of pants, two bras, and five shirts. No, four, because I finally threw out the one with a ratty neckline. I own a dress, too, but never wear it. I own two pairs of shoes and a pair of boots. My side of the closet has about two feet of useable space, and I need room for my jacket, too, so I wouldn't want more clothes than what I've got. Everything would be too crammed together. You can only wear one set of clothing at a time anyway.

I, too, am driving the same serviceable car I've had since 1989.

Still, I don't know if I'd describe myself as frugal. There aren't many categories of things that I want, and there is a deficit of space in our house, so I would never buy something unless its usefulness outweighed the fact that it takes up space. Exceptions: chocolate, Legos, and fancy coffee drinks from the coffee shop.

I'm frugal out of necessity.. it's my "safety net" against ending up homeless. Despite my educational achievements, finding a job has always been an unnecessarily grueling quagmire due to my limited social skills, social network, and interview skills. I've been out of work for more than a year during a time when the unemployment rate was like 4-5% despite my 2 Masters degrees in Engineering specialties, and had I not been frugal and saved up more than 2 years worth of living expenses, I would have ended up on the street.

Fyi, I'm a huge fan of Mr. Money Mustache even though I'm not as extreme in my frugality as he is (he claims to save over 50% of his income.)

I've never gotten credit and never will. I wouldn't say I'm frugal, given that I spend a good deal of money on clothes, food, wine, travel and books, but I've always lived within my means.

Last edited by Prometheus18 on 07 Jul 2019, 11:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm frugal for myself because I have simple tastes and I don't like shopping for anything beyond books or antiques. I've been quite impulsive about spending on others though, and I do give to charity when I can.

Yes! I forgot to mention that! I must give at least £100, in a typical month, to charity.

I don't have any kind of debt whatsoever, never lived outside my means and never buy fashionable or useless trinkets. I do tend to spend only on things I value and I appreciate quality.

If my name were Dmitri, the favoured object of my profligacy would be gypsy women, champagne, pies, French candy and violinists. I'd also set up high-stakes card games to which Poles would turn up using marked cards.

I think a lot of people may not realize that not having a credit card is a privilege. At my old job, I was forced to get one, since I had to travel to different states for work and get reimbursed for my travel expenses after. Being that I was not a child who grew up with a savings account to my name, when I got out of school I had no pot of money to pull from for these work expenses in my first job. The worst part was that they never reimburse the interest on those work expenses, and they seldom reimbursed me within the month.

It sounds like a raw deal, but you'd be surprised how common this is for entry level jobs that require travel.

Honestly, credit cards are only worth it for the points assuming you have the discipline to pay them in full all or most months. I exploit those offers of "get something like 40,000 points for spending $3000 in the first 3 months of opening a card".. and if you sign up for multiple cards that earn points on the same airline, you can combine them for some real great deals. I ended up getting 2 round trip tickets between the US and China this way for next to nothing this way.

You also need to be diligent in cancelling these cards before they start charging an annual fee as well as keeping up with the payments.. after a few lessons with late payments, I ended up pruning away the extra credit cards that I didn't use much anymore.