Frugality

Tech

you can paste an Amazon link into camelcamelcamel.com to check how good the current price is compared to the historical prices

you can set a deal alert on slickdeals.net to be alerted to sales on products and product categories you're interested in

Unless in edge-cases like needing audio description tracks, pirate TV shows and movies. Even with streaming platforms, pirated content has the convenience of being more shareable over Discord calls etc. Save your media money for things that actually have diminished content when pirated, e.g. online video games.

Most consumer tech can be bought refurbished or used in A-/B+ grade on eBay.

About eBay, if a device is easy to repair, look for two instances of it for parts with different issues. You can piece them back together, and resell the extra parts.

It's better to get an older flagship thing, than a newer mid-range thing. This goes for monitors, TVs, phones, GPUs and more.

https://reddit.com/r/buildapcsales and its canadian counterpart https://reddit.com/r/bapcsalescanada are amazing community-maintained resources for extraordinary tech deals.

This list: https://free-for.dev/#/

Buying a Chromebox and spending 10 minutes to hack it is about 150 dollars cheaper than buying an equivalent Windows mini PC.

Use Facebook Marketplace! Especially for appliances. Fridges, ovens, freezers and more seem to lose all their value. A 3 year old fridge bought for 800 gets sold for 120 on Facebook every Monday.

Consider what to buy used and what to buy new. As well as when to buy high-end versus when it doesn't matter. A good indicator for this is moving parts. This isn't always true, but there are specific components like motors, belts, rails, etc, that can seize up, disintegrate, rust over time. In those cases buying new and/or high-end will provide you with a longer lasting appliance, since they're built with better parts. Its important to do your research with multiple sources on which brands are high quality for a given product vertical.

Floor models are always a winner. Not every store will sell them to you, and some have an entire section dedicated to them. But always check. Even IKEA has a liquidation section just before the checkout area. I'd recommend you check these before checking the rest of the store you're in. Odds are you'll find a better deal there which you might've missed otherwise.

Transport

Learn to fix your own car. Its cheaper to send your phone for a display repair to the cell shop down the street since they have the 590 different tools for it. But most of your car's maintenance involves the new materials, your hands, and household tools you already have.

Flights: See Travel#Frontier GoWild! All-You-Can-Fly Pass for non-time-sensitive travel. Consider itineraries that involve taking a bus or train to a different city and using their airport.

Services

If you have a disability, read online if there are benefits cards you can sign up for. Many regions have these, and you can get free entry to concerts, discounts, and more.

Almost every service has new signup bonuses, e.g. cheaper internet for a year. Always google, always ask over the phone, if there are better plans.

Service providers for TV, cellphone, internet etc often have loyalty departments. If youve been a client of theirs for a few years and have always paid on time, you can probably save there too, because there are plans only for people eligible for loyalty, but theyre not advertised unless you ask to be transferred to the department. Tools like DoNotPay can also negotiate down bills automatically.

If you need healthcare in the US, sign up for one class a semester at a local university then use their shared health insurance. (link is somewhat out of date)

If you lose your personal items, most renter's insurance covers losing your personal items, even outside of your house. There's usually a deductible. If you don't have renter's insurance, you can get some via Lemonade, it protects you from natural disasters making your house unlivable, and there's an add-on for saving you from breakdown of washing machines, microwaves, and other equipment– in total, usually $10-15/mo or less.

Food

If there are products you keep buying over and over again. Consider checking their value, other brands, and if you can find bulk discounts. In my case, I drink a lot of Pepsi/Coke Zero. And I've come to the conclusion if you're paying 1$ CAD per liter or less, you're doing fine. For example, a pack of 6x710ML bottles is 4.2L, meaning you'd need to find it at 4,20$ or less. You'll often find also that packaging plays a huge part in product pricing. a 12x355ML can carton of Pepsi is almost never under a dollar, because aluminum is just that much more expensive to acquire and manufacture with than PET plastic bottles. This applies to all products.

While we're on the subject of food, check local charity offerings, you might find baskets, which are available to everyone. It's not because you deal with lots of money that you can't be broke. Being broke happens to all and these people understand. Feed yourself dammit.

Use restaurant-specific apps. e.g. McDonalds, Subway etc. Using them over Doordash will often save you a lot of cash, because they subsidize delivery fees, and points rack up quickly. If you go eat somewhere with friends, snag their bills and steal their points as well. In the McDonalds points rewards, the best is always fries for 4000 points, large fries. I've done the math. This is about 1,50$ more value than the other rewards.

If you're hungry for afternoon restaurant munchies, Too Good to Go has bulk restaurant food that would otherwise be thrown away at a reduced fee. It's usually whatever didn't sell that day and is getting stale. Sometimes they only have baked goods, and then you pick it up in a short window, or give detailed instructions to an Uber Connect driver, which doesn't always work.