Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Does frugality mean depriving yourself? Miserly Moms author Jonni McCoy says, "No!" and shares her money saving ideas for single income families on Home School Heartbeat.

Mike Smith:

Jonni, in your book Miserly Moms you say that the most important aspect of successfully saving money is understanding the difference between frugality and depriving yourself. Now what do you mean by that?

Jonni McCoy:

Well when I first started out there were a lot of my workmates who thought I was crazy because I was going to be giving up so many of my comforts and so many other things that they thought were important. And I knew that what I was doing was more important that any of those little comforts that I was going to give up. So it was very important for me to know that I was doing the things that I was doing and I was doing without the things I had to give up because of the goal I had. It was very important for me to reach my goal of being able to stay home. And it was very important to me to remember what that goal is. Sometimes I had to have a visual reminder. Picture of my son or a little index card taped to the mirror that says why I'm home. Because there are times when you really want to go and spend money in a certain area and you have to remember why you're doing it. It is sort of like dieting on food. You know, if you just do it because you sort of know you should lose a few pounds, you're going to give it up very quickly. But if you say have a medical reason or something very, very important to you, you would do it without any problem.