One of the ways we stay out of debt is to take frugal living to the extreme; we've already decided that following the conventional wisdom of the financial gurus just isn't enough to make ends meet and to get ahead.

Some of the advice given is to keep track of where your money goes, or brown bag it, and that's good advice, but, I don't have that kind of patients - I wish I did, impulsive behavior has been a drawback at times - so, instead of keeping track of what I spend I'll cut to the quick and not take my wallet at all, of course that takes care of the second issue "eating" as well, a great deterrent to fastfood. The one piece of advice that I do like is to declutter your home because you'll come across "found money"; finding money is always a treat, kinda gives you a miniature lottery winners rush, this is only good one time, after you've cleaned up your place - you could always trash out your house again and go for a really big score... wish it worked that way.

Most of my frugal efforts go towards the larger items on my seasonal list like, firewood; every year, at the start of the winter season, when the winds start to pick up there is a big call for tree service to remove blown down trees, alot of it hardwoods. I will offer my services at a greatly reduced price - free - no ones beaten that price yet. I can get enough wood for a couple of winters; some people will have the wood already bucked up for me and all I have to do is haul it away, at best I get a thank you and at the worst I only have to endure some eye rolling and maybe a crazy hillbilly comment(too true).

Extreme frugalism(uh, new word?) means having a closed system, where your wastes are recycled in one way or another otherwise your always going to have to pay out. A common example is composting yard wastes(grasses, leaves, twigs and manure) then using the decomposed organic matter in the garden come spring, and so it follows that after the havest,of vegetables and other plants, you would turn under the plants to decompose to return nutrients to the soil; a closed system of continually reused organic material.

Ideally my household would operate the same way, paper products burned or composted, food scraps given over to the worms(vermiculture) to be redistributed as castings. All recyclables (plastic, glass, tin) taken to the dump to be sorted. Unfortunately, procrastination is a vice I haven't totally given up, so, my closed system is still open ended; I'm working on it!

Specialization is a symptom of the disease, "I'm in debt up to my eyeballs and I can't get out!". The less you know how to do the more dependent you are on someone else, and of course, that someone else is going to charge you, "What the market can bear", translation: just enough not to break your back. So, our system has espoused the virtue of specialization, great for the economy, not so great for your wallet.

It wasn't too long ago(in the scope of history) that having the knowledge to perform alot of these things (making yarn, clothing, food production, building your own home, etc.) were all common place things that you were expected to know, now each is a specialization that only a person with the appropriate schooling could possibly perform - blah, blah, blah. I'm reminded, almost on a daily basis, that there are other people that take care of those things, that there isn't a need for me to know how to do this or that, and also being called a "Cheapskate". Recently when I was called a cheapskate, in the presence of my niece, she said, "No he's not, he's just frugal" - redemption at last.