A friend rewarded himself for kicking tobacco by using a year’s worth of savings that would otherwise have been diddled away on cigarettes to buy himself a beautiful fine-furniture stereo console with top-of-the-line (this, obviously, was some years ago, well before the iPod era). Decades later, he still has it, it still makes beautiful music, and he is still free of the cigarette habit.

However, routine washings are important, especially during winter months for those that are exposed to road salt. If you don’t rinse that off, it can lead to premature rusting and corrosion, especially on bottom of the car, which you don’t see but has the most important stuff! Not getting that taken care of will cost you big time in the long run.

Just thought I’d clarify to make sure nobody reading this gets the wrong idea and starts skipping regular washes. Definitely skip the $58 detailing, but don’t skip the $2 to $5 washes, your car needs those!!!!!!

I haven’t paid for a coffee outside of my home in almost a year. I’ve dropped cigarettes and greatly reduced alcohol, weekday lunches, and credit card interest.

Its funny how little you miss these habits once you break them.

From my experience I’d say the top 5 are:
Coffee, Cigarettes, Alcohol, Bottled Water, Weekday Lunches.

To me your description of the point of frugality is spot on. I always look at it as “Concious spending-saving money on the things that don’t really matter to you so you have enough money for those that DO!”.

Now, what is important is different for each person. For example, we are motorcyclists. The amount of money that we spend on that is totally worth it to us, it is one of dh’s main hobbies, and we compensate by rarely spending money on new clothes for ourselves or meals out. For someone else eating out might be their big thing. . . . The real key is that EVERYTHING can’t be important.

And of course the entire story changes if their is a true shortage of cash or great debt that needs to be gotten out of.