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:
Frugal living means prioritizing your spending and finding ways to save.
This article covers the 7 best frugal living blogs for seniors with tips and helpful resources to save you money and live on a budget.
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.
1. Mr. Money Mustache
Mr. Money Mustache can help you live a frugal yet badass life of leisure. The blog’s mission is “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.
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
The blog has been featured on Forbes, The Washington Post, The Economist, CBC News, Yahoo, AARP, and many other media outlets.
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.
The blog explores the ways to save money with a particular focus on recipes, DIY, and crafts while sharing frugal tips along the way.
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 periodically shows 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
- 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 maximizing your time, money, space, and relationships.
This is one of the must-visit frugal websites 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 articles that guide 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. 5 Dollars Dinners
This is one of the frugality blogs 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.
6. 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.
7. 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 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.
Other Frugal Living Blogs
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.
- 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 are our top picks for frugal living blogs for older adults and those living on a shoestring in retirement.
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 living tips from 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 is cheaper than Lyft in most cases)
- 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 7 websites for seniors to find more sites for older adults.
Sohail Ahmed
I love helping seniors with technology. This blog features apps, games, gadgets, technology tips, and tutorials for older adults … Know More