Frugal living means prioritising your spending and finding ways to save. If you are going to retire soon or are already retired and looking for frugal living tips for seniors, this article covers 7+3 best frugal living blogs for seniors with tips and helpful resources to save you money and live on a budget.
This list of frugal blogs for seniors will help you with articles on how you can save money in the kitchen, travel for less, save money through DIY projects and prioritise your spending.
First. Let us discuss the reasons many seniors stay frugal in retirement.
7 Reasons Seniors Stay Frugal in Retirement
According to the Employment Benefit Research Institute’s survey, 55% of American seniors (between ages 62 to 75 years old) plan to spend only a small portion of their savings (33%) or none of the savings (22%) after retirement.
The top 7 reasons cited by older adults to stay frugal in retirement are as follows:
- Feel better when account balance remains high
- The spent assets cannot be recovered
- Concern about inflation
- Saving for an unforeseen cost later in retirement
- Fear of running out of money
- Want to leave assets for an inheritance
- Spending down assets is unnecessary
The following graph shows more details about the above reasons for seniors to remain frugal in their golden years
I have also shared the retirement planning blogs and the best Ted Talks on retirement to help you with retirement planning and navigating the life after retirement.
7 Frugal Living Blogs for Seniors
1. Mr. Money Mustache
Mr. Money Mustache can help you live a frugal yet badass life of leisure. This is one of the most popular frugal blogs for seniors and adults with the mission “to help you create a life that is better than the current one, that just happens to cost 50-75% less”.
The blogger (Mr. Money Mustache) was able to retire in his 30s by living a lifestyle 50% less expensive than most of his peers and investing the savings.
In 2011, he started this blog to share tips with his friends who were living ridiculously expensive lifestyles, while thinking they were completely normal, and complaining about how hard life is.
Here are some of the posts to get you started, you will love every post on this blog.
- Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero
- The 4% Rule: The Easy Answer to “How Much Do I Need for Retirement”
- Killing your $1000 Grocery Bill
- The Shocking Simple Match Behind Early Retirement
- Wealth Advice That Should Be Obvious
There are so many great articles on this blog that I had hard time chosing the above articles for you to start. The other important areas that you should not miss on Mr. Money Mustache’s frugal blog are:
- Mr. Money Mustache Forum: An active community of 42,000+ members who discuss everything from taxes to investing and from real estate to sharing personal stories. The forum has 97000+ topics and always has hundreds of users online, discussing frugal living.
- MMM Classic: The most popular posts section on the blog with some excellent articles to help you.
The blog has been featured on Forbes, The Washington Post, The Economist, CBC News, Yahoo, AARP and many other media outlets. One of the best frugal living blogs for seniors and younger generations alike.
2. Prudent Penny Pincher
Stephanie (CEO of Prudent Penny Pincher) is an author and content developer who struggled to find a job after her studies and debt piled up. She adopted frugal living to survive and became fascinated when she found thousands of ways to save and earn money through her research on frugal living.
Her newfound passion for saving money inspired her to create a blog about frugal living where she shares ways to save money every day.
The blog explores the ways to save money with a particular focus on recipes, DIY, and crafts while sharing frugal tips along the way.
Some of the DIT topics that the blog cover include home décor, gardening and budget-friendly cooking recipes. Here are some of the articles to get you started
- 500 Frugal Money Saving Tips
- 150 Dirt Cheap Recipes for When You Are Really Broke
- 70 Cheap and Easy DIY Fire Pits
- 60 Best DIY Home Coffee Bar Ideas
- 100 Best Front and Backyard Landscaping Ideas
You will get hundreds of DIY tutorials and crafts projects and budget-friendly recipes geared to save you money.
3. Thrifty Frugal Mom
Lydia is an avid couponer and money-saver who cannot keep herself from living frugally. She enjoys the challenge of stretching the resources that God has blessed her with. She started Thirfty Frugal Mom to share her love of saving money.
The blog shares all aspects of homemaking for women including from-scratch recipes and lots of money-saving ideas. Lydia regularly posts her frugal menu plan. She will periodically show you pictures of what she buys on a $200/month grocery budget.
Here are some of the articles to give you an idea of what you will find on her blog and why this blog is one of the best frugal living blogs for seniors and how she can help you save some money.
- Blog Posts on how she spends her tight grocery budget for a family
- Regular Budget Menu plans for a family of 6
- 7 Reasons to Declutter and live with less
She also regularly shares frugal gift ideas on her blog to help you buy gifts for loved ones for less.
4. The Peaceful Mom
Kimberlee helps you thrive in challenging times and circumstances by maximising your time, money, space and relationships.
This is one of the must-visit frugal blogs for seniors, particularly women.
You will find many money-saving tips including a series on how to live on less than $28000 a year. One thing I love about this blog is the article that guides you to organize everything and declutter your home in minutes.
Here are some of the articles to get you started.
You can get free monthly editable calendars to plan your family’s activities, meals, payments and whatever you need to keep track of.
Read More: 10 Best blogs for women over 60
5. The Frugal Grandmom
The frugal grandmom lived and loved the journey of frugal living. You can find frugal resources, thoughtful ideas, family deals, recipes and more on her blog. The aim of the blog is to encourage seniors who are living a frugal and simple life.
You can join the frugal grandmom as she shares the journey to find beauty in simple things and live as frugally as possible.
You can visit her Resources section to get started and frugal living section to get all the tips on frugal living that makes it one of the frugal living blogs for seniors by a senior.
6. 5 Dollars Dinners
This is one of the frugal websites for seniors to help older adults spend less on groceries and make peace with having to cook dinner every night. You will find new recipes, weekly meal plans, tools and resources to help you live on a budget.
Erin Chase is a grocery-saving expert who runs free online workshops to help you with grocery savings, meal planning and cooking.
The 5 Dollard Dinners blog shares frugal hacks, meal plans and budget-friendly recipes regularly.
7. Na Na Pinches Her Pennies
This is a blog about a senior citizen (Anita Estes )living a frugal life on a fixed income and passing along the knowledge from lessons learned. She is barely surviving in a rough economy where the cost of everything keeps getting higher and higher but her social security does not.
Some of the frugal living tips you can find on her site, besides updates on her life as she struggles to make ends meet, include.
Following Anita’s journey makes you feel blessed with what you have and gives tips on how to live on the bare minimum. You can also tip her (through her tip jar section) on her blog.
Other Frugal Living Blogs for Seniors
Here are 3 more frugal blogs for seniors for frugal living tips and ideas for a retired individual.
- My Frugal Adventures: A blog by Charlene, a mom of two, who started her frugal adventure in 2009. She highlights deals on different products and helps you eat well on a budget by shopping fresh, local, and organic products.
- Frugal Retirement Living: A blog to help people spend less and retire. This website is interesting if you are planning to retire, are already retired or looking for ways to save money.
- Leisure Freak: Tommy retired early at the age of 51 years. He lived a traditionally defined life till 40 (married with three kids, a job, and a mortgage).
At 40 years, he decided to retire early and started living, what he calls, a “smart frugal and balanced life”. On his blog, Tommy shares how he retired early with less than a 6 figure salary and helps you look at your retirement savings differently.
These were our top picks for frugal living blogs for seniors and older adults. Now, let us discuss some of the common frugal living tips for seniors to save money and live on a budget.
40 Frugal Living Tips for Seniors
I have gone through several frugal tips for seniors from different experts and people living and advocating frugal living, it all comes down to these 40 tips to save money while living a smart and frugal life.
- Downsize to a smaller place/ Move to a lower-cost area
- Cook at Home/ Cut back on eating out (go out for breakfast instead of dinner)
- Meal Planning to cut down your food waste
- Create and stick to a budget
- Save on Utilities (electricity bill, water bill)
- Travel Off Peak
- Use public transportation (have to use a ridesharing service? Uber for seniors is cheaper than using Lyft)
- Declutter Your Home (turn clutter into cash)
- Be a savvy shopper (Find coupons/deals, secondhand options, bulk buying, ALDI shopping)
- Stock up on sales items (only the items that you need, not the items you want)
- Do not buy bottled water/ get a reusable water bottle for when you go out
- Compare prices before buying an expensive item
- Avoid impulse purchases
- Browse the clearance sections
- Avail senior discounts
- Try thrift shopping
- Plant a garden (get free seeds from the local library/university)
- Travel off-season/ avail travel rewards/ travel light
- Pay bills on time (no late fee)/ try to negotiate your monthly bills to get a discount
- Plan ahead for holidays
- Try free activities (go on a hike, visit the museums that have free admission for seniors)
- Track your spending/ double check your bills each month
- Read newspapers online (consider cutting the cable)
- Visit a National Park (avail huge discounts for seniors)
- Try DIY projects
- Reuse shopping bags
- Go Fishing (for fun and some free fish)
- Cut monthly subscriptions
- Use cash instead of credit cards (avoid paying interest)
- When buying new appliances, go for energy-efficient options
- Payoff debt (save money on interest and free up your income)
- Revise phone plan/ revise insurance policy
- Refinance mortgage
- Rent out Extra Space
- Start a side hustle (Read: fun retirement jobs that pay a small fortune)
- Exercise More (You do not need a gym membership to walk and run)
- Avoid peak energy prices (run appliances at off-peak times)
- Start a saving account
- Make your own products (candles, hand sanitisers, sauces, mixes, bread, spices)
- Get freebies, free product samples, and free stuff from the library
Did you find the above 40 tips for frugal living and frugal living blogs for seniors useful?
You can also have a look at the best senior forums and top 10 websites for seniors to find more sites for older adults.