What does a couple of years of my frugality look like?

In addition to saving for repairs and replacements of appliances, vehicles, emergencies, etc, we also have a savings kitty for upgrades to the house. We have money transferred every month, out of our bank account into an investment, for the non-necessary, but lovely-to-have improvements to our home and vacations. This account could be tapped for an emergency, or it can add to our retirement funds, down the road. But every so often, we use this money for something nice to use or have, like capital improvements, which could add to the salability of our home, if need be.

We don't do a lot of DIY with these improvements, instead only doing, ourselves, those things we are most familiar and comfortable with. We have a contractor friend from church, who has done a good deal of our installation. So, we save in the extreme sense, for a couple of years, to afford a project like what we had done this spring.

In the last two years, what I DIDN'T spend money on, so we could save to cover this:

• mani-pedis
• professional hair cuts and color
• new shoes, new handbags
• lunches in restaurants with friends
• fast food meals 
• dinners in local restaurants (except one birthday dinner, last November)
• new car
• extravagant travel
• convenience/packaged foods
• air conditioning for the house in summer
• winter heat enough to wear a t-shirt, indoors, in December, January, February
• knick-knacks, chotchkes, trinkets, novelties or thingamajigs
• department store cosmetics
• new books, new cds
• expensive hobbies and collections
• theater movies
• dvd rentals
• bouquets of flowers
• expensive birthday gifts or Christmas gifts for myself & husband
• new linens, just because I wanted a new color (I did replace the torn sheets for my bed)
• expensive new clothing
• brand-loyalty for products like laundry detergent, bathroom tissue, foods, toothpaste, soap, coffee, OTC meds
• coffeehouse coffee AKA Starbuck's (except with gift cards) 
• pets
• candy bars or other treats at the check-out of most stores (even Ace Hardware has candy bars at the check-out!)
• smartphone
• car wash places (I wash the car, myself with the hose)
• gardening services
• newspaper delivery
• new toys, gadgets, gizmos
• temporary indulgences, to be enjoyed only fleetingly

So, that about sums up where our money didn't go. Here's where all that I could have spent, but didn't, went instead. Our living room makeover. (I didn't take any before pictures. I rarely do. If it's bad enough for me to want to redo it, the last thing I want to do is take pictures of that ugly.)

the living room as you enter from the entry hall

the fireplace surround was dark brick,
the contractor over-layed Home Depot marble tile
the mirror over the fp is from Kohl's, on sale 50% off,
then $10 off coupon, I paid $39 (orig. $99)
the electric fireplace is new, puts out heat, too.
stuff on mantel gathered from other parts of the house

built-in bookcases, contractor built with paint-grade plywood,
for less $$$ than Home Depot cabinetry/bookcases
the small writing desk is a family piece, repurposed from another room,
it folds up and stands against the wall in the background, when not in use

a spot for my great grandmother's tea set,
on top of a garage sale cabinet (paid $40) that once housed
a Victrola phonograph (1920s) -- needs refinishing/painting

this chair is a new purchase

that's a fitted slipcover, so I can change it out/launder it

the paisley "throw" is a pashmina from my closet,
the needlepoint cushion is from another room

this table is a new purchase, it fits the space better than the hand-me-down,
1970's-era, over-sized Parson's table from my parents' home.
used some of the "stuff" I had in cupboards, some family pieces of silver-plate
 that I love, and candle sticks that never seemed to get used

the view of the room from the French doors, to the entry hall

We rarely ever used this room before. It had some lay-out problems. The seal on the old double-paned windows had broken, and so were permanently fogged on the inside. The wood-burning fireplace meant that we were dragging dirty logs into the house, across white carpeting, and making a mess, if ever it were used. (Plus most of the heat just went up the chimney, when we burned wood.) This room is far from the furnace, and would feel the chill more than the family room, kitchen or dining room.

It's now bright, warm and serves multiple purposes. There's a conversation area with seating for 6, plus 2 additional chairs in the room, to seat up to 8 comfortably. The loveseat with the blue cushions is about 30 years old, and will "go" with the first kid to move out. I'd like to replace it with a single chair (similar to the one we just bought). It's really too big for the space. I reupholstered it 20 years ago, and the upholstery is still in decent shape. The larger sofa is from my parents' home, and is about 35 years old (also reupholstered once).


So, when I'm making all kinds of sacrifices in the grocery department and not buying convenience foods, or, you read that we don't eat in restaurants, not even fast food, or, that we eat beans for dinner 3 to 4 nights per week, or, we don't go to the movies, or, that I cut my own hair, etc -- this is where the money that is saved, goes. It took us a couple of years of extreme saving for this. We have no debts, no mortgage, no car loans, no credit card debt. And our retirement is still being funded, monthly. We save, in advance, for home improvements and repairs, so there will be no future debts. This is what my "extreme" frugality gives to us.