Usually today is the day I post my accountability update for the month, but I felt like with three extra days to spend and some travel, it would be better to do it the first day of July.

ALSO, I was thinking about the importance of frugal friends and today happens to be my most frugal friend’s wedding, so in honor of that, let’s talk about finding your frugal tribe.

I’ve always been lucky to have some real rockstar friends. My best friends from high school are still my best friends and they’re a quiet group of dorky overachievers who generally make good life choices.

Some amazing things the high school BFF group does for me:

• The cheer on what are, frankly, some real psychotic long-shot life choices I’ve made.
• They encourage making choices that will make me happy.
• They point out when I’m making a bad choice.
• They are cool with financial restraints, when they need to apply.
• Two of them also love chatting about rewards credit cards.
• One of them is actually a ridiculously bad ass reward churner.
• One of them is awesome at little frugal moves like finding good deals and couponing.

And that’s just career and money related support.

Along the way, I’ve picked up a couple of other amazingly frugal people. Some were temporary visitors, some became permanent tribe members.

Why does this matter though?

I’ve found that fun is fun and time together is time together.

There’s nothing wrong with some splurges, if you can afford them, but it’s way easier to be able to afford them when the majority of your life is easily running below what you make.

If I have friends who just have to have the newest thing, go to the newest place, drink at the trendiest bars, this starts to wear off on me.

If I have friends who are cool with grabbing a .99 cent slice of pizza and catching up while sitting in Central Park… I have a much happier bank account and I’m still just as happy overall.

And honestly, I’m not recommending you run out and dump your non-frugal friends. I know that life doesn’t really work like that. Personally though, I just know when I’m going out with certain people, about how much I’m going to spend. There are certain friends that I know when they want to go out and grab dinner, it’s going to be $100 night.

Once in a while, that’s fine. But if they were my main tribe, how would I survive? I try to keep my main tribe to the frugal-er folks.

I was just telling another friend that a few years ago, I went on two little trips in a row to catch up with friends.

The expensive trip involved staying at the friend’s apartment, but going to a concert, drinking fancy cocktails, and eating out at expensive areas.

The frugal one involved walking through some hot springs, almost escaping an escape room, several meals out, and booking a hotel room for the night.

Despite both being the same length of time together, and both being totally equally fun, one was way more expensive than the other.

If you don’t currently have a frugal tribe or none of your friends are drinking the personal finance Kool-Aid (yet), you can still search for a tribe in one other place.

The Internet.

Yes, it sounds a little geeky, but I totally consider the personal finance community my other tribe.

They’re not all frugal, but they do all know how to make their money work for them and they’re a bunch of ridiculously supportive people, if you find the right ones.

Who in your life is helping you reach your maximum personal finance potential?