Frugal

It's more of a generalized rule but:

Assume that your own time has value.

A lot of "frugal" tips operate off the assumption that you can spend your own time and it doesn't cost anything. But your time is valuable. Time spent trying to save a few bucks should be considered working time; ask yourself how much you would get paid by your job for the same amount of time. Maybe you enjoy doing whatever the thing is, so it can be considered recreation, but if it's some difficult or mind numbing slog, then that doesn't necessarily mean that you actually saved yourself anything, because you weren't getting paid to do work, and you could have been doing something more rewarding instead.

Businesses have caught up and fixed the exploits.

For me, it's dried beans. Beans are an excellent source of protein and fiber, and it doesn't get much cheaper per serving than bulk dried beans.

But rinsing, soaking over night, and then boiling, only to end up with way more beans than we will consume, and canned beans are almost as good and almost as cheap.

Searching for the cheapest gas station. Too much time and gas.

Cloth nappies/diapers. Cleaning them is a black hole for personal time.

Flights with connections. Flying has become so tedious, frustrating, stressful, that saving money by spending yet more hours dealing with it, just isn’t worth it. I’d sooner cancel the trip

Not sure if this counts, per se, but Solar Panels. Specifically, via a loan.

My electric bill is insane, thanks to the powers of capitalism and monopoly. So I figured installing solar panels would be a good investment. Sure it takes ten years to break even, but I’d rather be paying my way through that than paying my electric utility.

Well, the problem I ran into was that the interest on a loan would effectively negate any headway I was hoping to make per month.

I still plan on doing solar, but not before either interest rates at least quarter themselves or I save up enough to practically pay for it up front.

This is a little different from the others on this list, but a lot of DIY stuff for parties/weddings. The money you're saving is negated by time lost, not to mention unless you have unlimited time/ no job and are able to thrift everything, the components for DIY aren't that inexpensive. For my sister's wedding, we did everything ourselves. Everything from literally painting the venue, collecting/creating every table scape, my dad built the stage and dance floor, all the way through setting up the hundreds of little desserts on the day of. It was all wonderful and lovely. And took a massive amount of time and labor across several families. When you factor in the value of people's time, it was not less expensive than mine. We rented everything and it was so nice not to stress about dressing every corner of the room or decorating the bar, or making sure we didn't run out of ice on the day of. We still chose super frugal options because the wedding industry is a scam, but we just paid for everything.

Sometimes it's worth it just to pay people to do stuff. Value your time and mental health more than money.

Growing your own food. The only way to make that shit pay is to groom a cult to do it for you, large-scale.

The cheapest food is always a massive rip off. It doesn't matter if you're willing to settle for something that doesn't taste as good. The cheapest food has been stripped down to such nothingness that you need to eat 3x more to stay alive. It doesn't work for the same reason you can't just drink water and feel full.

The cheapest option is always cheapest for a reason. Incrementally so the amount cheaper it is than the average.

I always thought couponing looked obnoxious.

Using things outside of their intended purposes. I live in a gated community with my folks. Our house borders an apartment complex community, the border is a fence followed by a hedge in our backyard. We have several fruit trees in our backyard including avocados and mangoes. During fruiting season, avocados will drop and fall over the fence. My mom uses a pvc pipe with a kitchen knife taped to one end to use as a spear to retrieve avocados over the fence on the other community's side. 5+ kitchen knives have been broken by doing this. I recently bought a 30ft fruit picker to collect fruit before they drop, so hopefully that helps to alleviate the problem.

DOCAZOO DocaPole 7-30 Foot (30 ft Reach) Fruit Picker and Telescopic Extension Pole for Apples, Avocados, Oranges, and Other Fruit Trees https://a.co/d/hZUlhHK