Many people don’t understand the frugal, and many more don’t understand the self reliant.

Frugality will go a long way to helping you become more self reliant.  How?  Frugality is about:

• Smart choices
• Planning
• Creativity
• Resourcefulness
• Maximizing benefits
• Minimizing Costs

Funny . . . these are some of the very same characteristics of the self reliant.  If one can be careful with one’s finances, one can more easily transition to being more careful with one’s entire life.

To be more self reliant, you need to work on controlling:

• Money
• Food
• Clothing
• Shelter
• Resources

These are changes that don’t happen overnight, rather they require a little work (I know “work” is a four letter word) and investment of time and money.  Frugality helps provide the investment capital, if you will, for building a self reliant life.

Just as fortunes aren’t built overnight, neither are lifestyles.  They are both the result of a long series of careful choices based upon planning.

Most of us over at the Self Reliance Exchange seek more self reliant lives, some of us are further along than others, but we all share the common goal and our frugal natures help us inch closer to the dream.

Frugality helps us have the money to:

• Build independent lives
• Utilize a disciplined approach
• Invest in the tools we need
• Buy and then seed save the seeds for our gardens
• Purchase and maintain livestock
• Develop and expand the skills and our knowledge base
• Buy or make the equipment we need
• Start businesses to generate income

You will find we are all careful with money and we view using our money as investments, not expenses.  If you seek to become more self reliant, consider starting by cultivating your frugal “muscles”.

This post originally appeared on Self-Reliance-Exchange.com, here is the link to the original post: The Role of Frugality in the Self Reliant Lifestyle.

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