Ashley Feinstein Gerstley founded the Fiscal Femme with the intention of “demystifying the world of money and personal finance.” When asked about her inspiration to become a personal finance coach Ashley said, “I was a finance major and finance professional who knew absolutely nothing about my own money. I thought, ‘If I don’t know anything about this money stuff, then who does?’” With this in mind, Ashley set on her own financial adventure by reading books and applying what she learned. Documenting her journey through her blog, the Fiscal Femme. With the success of her blog, Ashley realized that people needed personal finance services and made it her mission to educate and coach in ways that would get them the best results with a fun process. Ashley’s mission has led to the “three prongs” of her business: her online money school featuring the 30 Day Money Cleanse, corporate financial wellness programs, and one-on-one coaching.

When asked about being “fabulously frugal” Ashley said, “being fabulously frugal means increasing the fabulous in your life while decreasing the cost. We can do this by getting clear on the things that are important to us and letting go of the rest. It’s a win-win because you actually are living better and enjoying life more while also saving more for your goals. There are opportunities to be fabulously frugal everywhere and what’s fabulous for one person won’t necessarily be fabulous for another, so it’s important to test out your ideas.”

Here are Ashley’s 5 tips to be a fabulously frugal Fiscal Femme!

1) Choose an item or activity. The first step to being fabulously frugal is to choose an activity or item in your life to make fabulously frugal. This can be something that’s already working great in your life or something that you know could use some reworking or sprucing up. For example, it can be as simple as your weekly dinner date with your friends.

2) Pinpoint what you love. Continuing our dining out example, when you give it some thought, what’s most important to you about your weekly dinners together is that you get to spend quality time with your friends and also get to try new and unique dishes.

3) Pinpoint what you don’t love. When thinking about what you don’t love about your weekly friend ritual, you realize that the places you try are often loud and make it difficult for you to hear each other. They also tend to kick you out after a couple of hours because they need the table for the next group and you end up also spending a lot of money.

4) Fab Frugal it! To make this fabulously frugal, we want to keep the parts of this friend routine that are important to you and let go of the rest. What other ways could you get quality time with friends while enjoying new foods? Maybe you alternate hosting themed potlucks where everyone brings something they haven’t tried before or you go to the same restaurants for lunch when the prices are lower and it’s less crowded. Get creative. There are limitless ways to make your life fabulously frugal and remember, this only makes your life better so get moving.

5) Brainstorm with friends. Even better, bring your friends in on it so you can come up with ideas together. More ideas means more possibilities and they might have different reasons why they love your friend traditions so you will want to make sure your new ideas are a win-win for them too.

Interested in staying up-to-date on personal finance? Here are Ashley’s recommendations!

For our financial wellness, I don’t believe finance news is something that you necessarily need to stay on top of and current with. It’s about getting educated, taking action, and improving our relationship with money. One of the best ways to do this is to show our money some love. Schedule time in your calendar every other week to deal with your financial to-dos. Check in on your spending, cancel that subscription you aren’t using, and read an article on a money topic that interests you. There is so much great personal finance content out there. I love Refinery 29, Bustle and PureWow’s money content. Also don’t forget to check out my blog on the Fiscal Femme or follow me on social @thefiscalfemme for fun money conversations and inspiration.

Contributor: Keerthi Jayaraman