5 Frugal Habits We Still Practice After Reaching FIRE

After putting together our FIRE plan in 2009, my wife and I adopted several frugal habits—not because we enjoyed deprivation, but because we wanted to spend more intentionally.

Those habits helped us reach financial independence in 2019 and eventually retire early in 2025.

What surprised me is that even after FIRE, we never stopped doing them.

Sure, we occasionally splurge on business-class airplane seats or a ridiculously expensive dinner. But lifestyle inflation never fully took over.

Looking back, I realized all of these habits came from the same underlying mindset.

RUNNING OUR HOUSEHOLD LIKE A BUSINESS

Learning how to invest using fundamental analysis didn’t just change how I viewed stocks. It changed how I viewed spending.

One of the primary responsibilities of a CEO is capital allocation—figuring out where a company’s money should go.

Should the company pay down debt? Expand operations? Buy back shares? Make an acquisition?

Over time, I started looking at our household the same way.

My wife and I were basically a two-person company with income, expenses, debt, and financial goals. And like any CEO, I had to decide how to allocate our capital as effectively as possible.

That mindset pushed us to lower costs in areas we didn’t care much about so we could spend more freely on travel, food, experiences, and investing.

Looking back, many of the habits below weren’t really about being cheap. They were about being intentional.

Here are a few habits we never stopped doing—and why.

THE MOST UNDERRATED FREE RESOURCE LEFT

Public libraries feel almost obsolete to some people now, which is probably why many are surprised that we still use ours all the time.

I had a friend once tell me he couldn’t remember the last time he stepped inside a library. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him mine was always busy.

I have no idea how much the library has saved us over the years, but it’s easily in the thousands. And it’s not just savings on books. The library offers so much more than that.

Back when we couldn’t afford cable TV or Netflix, we kept fairly current with TV shows and movies by borrowing VHS tapes—remember those?—and DVDs from the library.

Even now, although we subscribe to several streaming services, we still borrow DVDs and Blu-ray discs from the library. We may be one of the last homes in our neighborhood that has a DVD player, but some movies never come out on streaming platforms we subscribe to.

In addition to entertainment, the library continues to be my free resource for online classes and stock research through Morningstar. The latter is particularly valuable because Morningstar’s in-depth stock analysis is usually only available through a paid subscription.

And that’s just scratching the surface. My local library also offers:

• Museum and park passes

• Passport services

• Mobile WiFi hotspots

• Ancestry research through Ancestry Library

• Language classes

• College admission test preparation

• Legal forms

• Value Line (another stock research tool)

I would urge anyone to look into what their local library offers. Every library system is different, but many offer way more than books. Mine basically functions like a free subscription service funded by my taxes.

THE HAIRCUT EXPERIMENT THAT NEVER ENDED

I’ve been to the barber only twice in the past 25 years because my wife cuts my hair. This started out because I couldn’t get a decent haircut when I first moved to Vegas. I don’t know if barbers didn’t know how to cut Asian men’s hair, but man…it was bad. I used to even laugh at my reflection in the mirror.

So one day, I bought a hair clipper set for $20 and asked my wife to cut my hair. She was hesitant at first because she had never cut hair before. But I reasoned that even if the haircut came out bad, at least I’m not paying for it.

The first time she cut it, I came out looking like William Hung from American Idol. Yeah, it was that bad.

But she improved over time. And guess what? So did the barbers in town. I know because I went back to one once or twice.

Still, I choose to get my hair cut at home every month. At $35–$40 per haircut, the money saved really adds up over a year.

My wife doesn’t mind cutting my hair because she’s been doing it for so long now. And the money we save helps offset the several-hundred-dollar cost of getting her hair done.

She considers that a fair trade.

OUR EMBARRASSINGLY OLD CARS

Towards the end of my career, I thought it was funny that some of my coworkers were only slightly older than my car.

One of my cars was purchased 20 years ago. My “newer” car is 13 years old. And these aren’t luxury cars either.

Even though we could afford newer luxury cars, it makes no sense to buy one. Both cars still reliably take us to where we want to go. Outside of routine maintenance issues, we only pay for insurance and annual registration. That sure beats monthly car payments.

But practicality aside, wouldn’t I want to impress people by driving a luxury car?

No, because I know I wouldn’t impress anyone. Nobody who sees an expensive car on the road wishes they could have the life of the person behind the wheel. They’re just imagining themselves driving that car. In other words, they admire the car, not the driver.

If they want to admire the car, they can look up the car online. I’d rather spend money on travel and great meals than on impressing strangers at stoplights.

OUR RESTAURANT “PUNCH CARD” SYSTEM

On the topic of eating out, my wife and I are major foodies. We’ll attend every food festival we can find and plan trips around a city’s food scene. We even keep a running list of restaurants we want to try. But it’s a “hobby” that can get expensive.

Here’s how we use what I think of as a virtual punch card to keep our dining expenses from getting out of control without tracking every dollar.

Restaurants fall into three categories:

• Low

• Medium

• High

For us, medium costs roughly twice as much as low, while high costs roughly twice as much as medium.

So if we budget $200 for restaurants in a month, we can:

• Have one expensive dinner

• Have two medium-priced dinners

• Have four cheaper meals

• Or mix and match

Once the “punches” are used up, that’s it until the next month.

The $200 allotment resets each month; unused punches don’t carry over. Since we don’t track dollar amounts, this offsets any overages we might have. By the end of the year, we hope to be slightly under budget rather than over.

THE SPREADSHEET WE NEVER STOPPED USING

Years before we retired, we tracked our monthly expenses on a kakeibo spreadsheet.

Kakeibo is often translated to “Japanese budgeting method,” but I’ve never liked that definition. Budgeting often feels restrictive. A kakeibo feels more like awareness.

Using a kakeibo is similar to balancing a checkbook, back when people still used to do this manually. It’s really just a financial ledger to track household expenses and income. This way, you know where your money is going and whether you’re cash-flow positive or negative.

We started using a kakeibo to track expenses to know if we were overspending in any particular area. When needed, we’d adjust our spending and ensure we’d come out ahead.

The kakeibo was instrumental in helping us get out of debt and figure out how much we’d need to retire early. Now that we no longer have earned income, the kakeibo is even more important to make our money last.

You’d be surprised at how many people have no clue as to how much they spend each year and on what. Many people don’t even know if they’re living above or below their means.

Honestly, tracking your expenses for even a single year puts you ahead of most people financially.

THESE HABITS STOPPED FEELING “FRUGAL”

Over time, I stopped thinking of these as frugal habits.

They simply became systems that helped us spend more intentionally and avoid wasting money on things we didn’t value very much.

Reaching FIRE didn’t suddenly make us want luxury cars, bigger houses, or expensive status symbols. It just gave us more freedom to spend on the things we already cared about most.

Honestly, many of these habits became so normal over the years that we barely think about them anymore.

I’d love to hear what habits you’ve kept as your financial situation or priorities changed.

See you at the finish line!

Disclaimer: I’m not a licensed financial professional. This blog shares my personal experiences and opinions around money, investing, and early retirement. It’s for informational and educational purposes only—not financial, legal, or tax advice. Always do your own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.