Like many here we are more frugal on somethings and less on others. For us, we got seriously frugal by bagging the US entirely and moving to Hungary. We got rid of our gas guzzling car (Acura TL) and bought a Prius specifically to save money in Europe where gas is just above $8 a gallon. But, I buy gas perhaps every 6 weeks or so and then it is only 8 gallons. If travelling then it is of course a major expense, but this is relatively infrequent. We do stay only at 4 or 5 star hotels which we have developed a taste for when travelling. Here in Hungary the farming laws are strict (no genetically modified food is permitted in the EU and nearly all insecticides are banned now in Europe) and all food is essentially organically grown, fresh and much less expensive than in the US. Our food budget is around $400 a month. We are coming up on 3 years of ER now and I have developed a love of cooking so we don't eat out at restaurants except when friends visit us. Because utilities are about 5 times higher in Europe than in the US we have gotten frugal on this especially. I concerted our computers to low power (built 2 myself using AMD M150 CPU) and only uses 20 watts. My wife still day trades in the US and has a higher power system which uses 120 watts. We have a gas heating system which feeds radiators and hot water but is is only used from late October to mid-April. I then switch to electric water heating only. Gas runs us around $5000 a year and electric about the same. Water is surprisingly expensive and also is about 3000 a year. I am seriously considering solar system to offset our electric needs and our village is in a resort community on Lake Balaton which has thermal water so we are working out a deal with neighbors to sink a deep well for thermal water for home heating. Our property taxes are zero, and our insurance is $200 a year. Because our weather is especially mild (think DC without the humidity) we have no air conditioning and have a steady northerly wind so just open the windows in the Summer. Winters I installed a system that divides the house into 3 zones on wireless controllers and keep the house at 15 degrees C in areas we aren't in, to 22 degrees C in areas we are using. We have about 3 acres, a (large for Hungary) fully enclosed swimming pool, sauna, and a 4,000 sq ft house with everything we could possibly need. I set up wireless routers around the place so we have internet everywhere on the property. We get high speed internet as a combination package from our cable TV company (UPC) which has 120 MBPS connection, cable TV (mostly in Hungarian but 6 english news channels, US sports, and about 10 english language movie etc. and includes telephone all for less than $50 a month. Interestingly, we had expected costs to be a lot higher but so far we are pleasantly surprised. I earn $3000 a month from my military retirement and we have a substantial amount of money in investments which we expected to start drawing from but we are living on less than $2000 a month. I was working 1 week a month in the US but frankly we don't need it so I have reduced this to the minimum. We have a full time property manager and a woman that cleans the house. I also cancelled all subscriptions except a proxy server to get around the stupid US internet games, and also recently cancelled Netflix as well. Mostly, we travel, I mountain bike, go hiking in the huge local National Park and am planning to buy a boat this Summer for the lake. We also read all books with e-readers and we have switched to tablets (I have an ASUS Transformer and my wife is getting an i-Pad 3 in May) for surfing the internet etc. But, our lifestyle is nearly 180 degrees from what we had in the US so it is difficult to figure out is we are more or less frugal. I think less but our quality of life is far better than what we had in the US. The weirdest things is that $3,000 a month in the US would be a modest lifestyle (or in some areas impossible) but here you are considered rich. We don't regret leaving the US ever.
