My parents were raised during The Depression.  It stayed with them their entire lives and much of it rubbed off on me. 
    I am obsessive about wasting things.  I will use the same oil four or five times to fry food in. In the Winter I will plug my tub and keep the shower water there until it's cold so I don't waste the energy it took to heat it.  If you are in my house and you leave a room you'd better turn the light off or you'll hear about it.  I even go around other peoples' houses turning their lights off. The same with ceiling fans.  There is absolutely no reason for a fan to be running in a room with no one in it.  Or a TV. I will only throw away leftovers if they're rotten.  I never throw bones away... they're used for stock. After twenty four hours slow boiling in the crock pot the stock bones become soft so I use them as dog treats. I won't even throw the seeds away from vegetables I've cleaned. If I can't eat them myself the birds and Tree Rats can. 
     The only new furniture I've ever bought in my life was a kitchen table and chair set I bought about thirty five years ago which I still have.  All the rest of the furniture I've had IN MY ENTIRE LIFE has either been handed down or trash picked.
    Speaking of trash picking, I have no qualms whatsoever about going through my neighbors' trash.  My late wife Marie was horrified when our daughter Kate started trash picking with me.  It's not something I do every week but if I notice something I can use in someone's trash I'll claim it without hesitation.
    I won't throw the tiny ends of my bars of soap away.  I stuff them in a scrubber and use them to wash dishes with.
    I keep my house at sixty degrees Fahrenheit in the Winter.  In the summer the air conditioner goes no colder than seventy five.
     I still have my very first bicycle that I got when I was five, almost sixty years ago.  I finally had to get rid of my Suzuki Samurai after twenty six years.  It needed a rebuild and I don't have the tools or expertise to do it.  Of my remaining cars one is my late wife's, a Suzuki Grand Vitara, which is fifteen years old.  The other was left to me by my parents.  It's a twenty eight years old Ford Escort Wagon. 
     I hate buying clothes for myself and will only do so when my old clothes are literally falling apart.
     Roomie Mike and his two lovely daughters love to hold the door open and talk to people on the other side.  I have no desire to heat or cool the great outdoors so I'll tell them "That door is my wallet. As you hold it open dollar bills are flowing out and evaporating." 
     Running hot water down the drain for no reason will drive me insane. When Chrissie was living with me she was a chronic hot water waster.  We actually had some pretty big fights over it. "I paid for that water and the energy to heat it."
     I know there are a few other things that I can't recall at the moment that I will  mention later. So what do you do that's cheap as hell?
Edit:  These things individually might seem ridiculous but if you can get in the habit of being frugal all the time in a year it can amount to some real savings.

Edit:  In the Summer I will only turn on the air conditioner if the inside temperature goes up to ninety degrees Fahrenheit.  Otherwise fans will suffice.

My folks also lived through the GD. but I am not sure that is why they were so conservative. That is what I call it. "Waste not; want not" and all that. We were country people. Had our own wells. One for the house and one for the barn, yet we were very conservative with it. I was in the army when I found out some people turn on the tap and let it run while they brush their teeth!
Shutting off lights and closing doors is just common sense, but I noticed early on that a lot of people were absent the day it was passed down to us. 
We also try not to drive a couple days a week, save the cleaner half sheets of paper towels to wipe down the kitchen floor and buy food in bulk.
Some people might be offended if I went around their house shutting off lights and closing doors If someone did that here, I would say, Thanks

walter wrote on Feb 21^st, 2019 at 11:42am:


This gives me anxiety. No joke. I have to step in and turn it off. Leaving taps running is just... No.

I have a garden, it's on the small size compared to my mother's.  And I don't can everything as soon as it gets ripe.  I do pick it and eat it.  I used to freeze a lot of stuff from the garden until lightening hit my shed where the freezer was.

No television.  No cell phone or I Pad.  I don't get reception out here, anyways. Lights stay off.  I wear a sweater or sweatshirt in the house in the winter.  And put another blanket on the bed.  One window air conditioning unit, I use fans to circulate the air.  I do keep them on, otherwise the house turns into an oven.  The AC is only on when I'm inside, usually at night.

Specific Latent Heat and Specific Heat Capacity! I picked up something at least from those high school physics lessons

My Dad is an engineer and I remember lots of lectures about saving the water from baths in the winter. It's amazing how much paying the utilities changes your outlook.

Cooking the same way. The USDA has a budget for food (https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/CostofFoodJan2018.pdf) with "thrifty", "moderate" and "liberal" options and my family is well under what they consider "thrifty". And we eat just fine, our diet is balanced and we're all well fed (too well in my case, I need to lose about 10 pounds). We shop the sales and use the crock pot and cook from scratch. It makes a big difference.

And I think Dan is right. The point is to save money for what you actually want. But you have to take care of needs first. Younger folks tend to forget that includes saving for retirement.

There’s a big difference between cheap and frugal. I don’t believe in being wasteful, and that’s why as I get older I find myself preferring quality over low prices if I can’t have both. I’d rather buy something nice once than keep buying the cheap one that’s going to break.

   One of my banks and my Radiology office give away free pens so I never buy them.  The ones from South Jersey Radiology are actually of a pretty good quality.  But I do understand about once in a while buying quality just because it's nice and it lasts.
   I lived in the barracks almost my whole time in the army.  Every day someone would accidentally leave their soap or shampoo in the shower.  My whole time in the service I never once bought shampoo or soap.  Of course I couldn't be particular about brands but who cares if it's free.   
   I have found or trash picked coolers that people threw away or left simply because they were trashed.  Something gross and rotten was inside and they couldn't be bothered to clean it.  I scrubbed, bleached, or what ever it took and have ended up with some pretty good coolers that way.
       I found soggy pair of boots that were in my size, muddy and soaked that someone didn't feel like cleaning and just left. I took them home, saddle soaped, dried,  and oiled them and they were as good as new. I don't remember the brand but they were pretty good boots.  I had them for years.
    It often amazes me what people throw away.