I agree that if you do have a lot of downtime, it's probably worth it.
I'm assuming the audience here is filled with ambitious entrepreneur types who don't have such a luxury. On my end, I can't think of any passive activity I do where my hands and mind are free (I watch no TV, can't multitask reading news/blogs/books with cutting coupons, etc.). Besides, from my experience cutting coupons with my mother as a child, I know how poor the ROI is.
My main original point was simply that all the small things in aggregate are... still small. Looking at my budget (which is probably similar to many on this board), the sum of all expenditures not related to housing, auto, or food are less than rent alone. If I wanted to, I could halve my rent (many of my peers in San Francisco could drop theirs by 70+%) and eliminate the also expensive auto. There is no way I can produce such a bang with the "small things" without significantly sacrificing my lifestyle or consuming tons of time deal hunting.
Cutting coupons or coffee or netflix won't help him. Selling his car and moving to a cheaper (half current price) apartment immediately breaks him out of his financial problems.
The guy you mentioned is hardly frugal. He is whining that he isn't spending anything on luxury - while in truth, EVERYTHING is super luxurious. He treats his whole life as one big luxury experiment. One rents (0% downpayment lease is a rent) non essential resources, especially at the brackets he cites.
In such cases 50% expense could be dropped immediately, with hardly any meaningful impact on quality of life.
I'm assuming the audience here is filled with ambitious entrepreneur types who don't have such a luxury. On my end, I can't think of any passive activity I do where my hands and mind are free (I watch no TV, can't multitask reading news/blogs/books with cutting coupons, etc.). Besides, from my experience cutting coupons with my mother as a child, I know how poor the ROI is.
My main original point was simply that all the small things in aggregate are... still small. Looking at my budget (which is probably similar to many on this board), the sum of all expenditures not related to housing, auto, or food are less than rent alone. If I wanted to, I could halve my rent (many of my peers in San Francisco could drop theirs by 70+%) and eliminate the also expensive auto. There is no way I can produce such a bang with the "small things" without significantly sacrificing my lifestyle or consuming tons of time deal hunting.
Case in point is this reddit post I saw awhile back: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jelt1/dear_anonlu...
Cutting coupons or coffee or netflix won't help him. Selling his car and moving to a cheaper (half current price) apartment immediately breaks him out of his financial problems.