9 Frugal Living Tips From Our First 2 Years of Marriage

My wife and I could’t wait to get married. 

Just 6 weeks after graduating college we tied the knot and embarked as a 22 year-old and 21 year-old on the greatest adventure of our lives.

Our first challenge: paying off nearly $70,000 in student loans between the two of us.

If you know me personally, you know that I can get pretty passionate about things. In fact, my sister once said that I don’t just have hobbies, they’re obsessions. So naturally, I didn’t want to just chip away at this debt, I wanted to tear it to pieces.

Within 2 years, with many material sacrifices, we paid off every last dime of that debt. The first year my wife didn’t even have a full-time job yet, so much of our savings came down to straight up frugal living grit.

I spent some this morning thinking back to those early years (now over a decade ago), and reflecting on what we did that made the biggest difference. 

Here are my 9 best frugal living tips for young, married couples willing to adopt some extreme habits.

Rarely spend money eating out, and when you do be strategic

Eating out is one of my weaknesses. When you’re tired, lazy, or just feeling like mixing things up, it’s so tempting to jump in the car and get that reward. But your food budget is also one of the most controllable ways to save money.

In our first year, we would rarely ever go out. And when we did, we’d do something simple like share an appetizer or get italian ices at Ritas. Occassionally we’d pick a couple items off the dollar menu at McDonalds just for a little fun.

All of those might seem pretty boring if you’re using to eating out at nice places, but that’s the point— we weren’t use to any of that, and so anything we did seemed like fun. 

Pay down your debt in big, satisfying chunks

One of the biggest challenges of frugal living is pychological. In our wealthy society, we’re using to using money as a pick-me-up or an emotional crutch. Mollie and I found it crucial to turn the tables and use our progress to keep our motivation high.

Instead of paying down in constant trickle, we’d let it build up in our checking account and then pay off a nice, big round number every so often. Maybe $3,000 one-time, or $4,000 another. We’d be so excited for those days, just sitting around the table together and hitting send and watching that number drop in a meaningful way.

Figure out a few cheap meals you actually enjoy, and stick with them

As I mentioned earlier, we discovered that food was the biggest non-fixed budget category that we could control. So, we really focused on finding cheap meals we liked eating and then just kepting eating them until we didn’t like them anymore, or pretty close!

Our go to’s were baked zita and tuna noodle casserole. I know— carb-heavy and not the healthiest, but the rest of our diet was fairly balanced. 

Maximize your time with friends which are the cheapest fun you have

What would we have done in those early years without some awesome friends? We quickly joined a church after getting marriage and were fortunate to connect instantly with some other newlyweds who lived nearby.

We spent many evenings with these new friends hanging out, playing games, cooking each other meals, and just doing life together. All of it was virtually free but made us feel as rich as royalty.

Push off all non-essential spending until a future milestone

You can’t delay buying new clothes, furniture, and other essentials forever. But, compared to the average American couple, we found you can push it a lot further than most.

Instead of an annual shopping trip to update our wardrobe, we only bought clothes when an essential item wore out, or when we reached a mjore milestone in paying off our debt. You can’t get carried away by these little rewards, or you’ll find they destroy your momentum, but they really are a small thing to look forward to along the way.

Mooch off your local library for fun and entertainment

We look back fondly on our nearly daily trip to the library. Why daily? That’s easy— we decided not to get internet our first year of marriage to save money, and so we’d walk to the library to check emails. Yes, that sounds a little crazy today, but not having internet or smartphones was an amazing blessing for our first year.

While at the library we would also pick up books and movies which pretty much convered all the at-home entertainment we needed— all free of charge if you brought them back on time.

Take gift-giving off the table, and make people feel special instead

With our budget as tight as it was, you can imagine we had no room for gift-giving. This was no problem because 1) we were both on the same page and 2) we were both creative enough to come up with other ways of showing our affection.

These “gifts” ran the gambit from cooking a favorite dinner, at-home date nights, massages, and hand-written letters. 

Call yourself a minimalist so that your frugality becomes an identity

In college, I had a blog named The Art of Minimalism, so it was actually quite natural for me to extend this mindset towards the frugal living of our first few years of marriage. My wife, while not exactly as gung-ho as me, was up for the challenge of doing something hard and excited by our shared sense of purpose.

We drew a lot of inspiration from reading other minimalist living blogs during that period (at the library, of course), and I think this is a key reason why we stayed motivated for as long as we did.

Make your home the same temperature as the outside (within reason)

This one is kind of crazy, but for large parts of the year, the temperature inside our house was whatever it was outside. In the winter, we’d be quicker to turn on our heat if it went into the 50’s inside, but in the summer, there were definitely times it was in the 90’s in our house.

I vividly remember the feeling of walking up the steps to our 2nd floor apartment and feeling the temperature rise with each step. Sometimes you’d be sweating before even reaching our floor.