Living frugally is a great way to keep your finances under control, but if taken too far it can have a detrimental effect on your life. Being able to balance your life and money is just as important as living a frugal lifestyle. If you consider yourself an expert in frugality, you may benefit from learning more about how living frugally can end up costing you in the end. Here are five drawbacks of frugal living.

1. Always Buying The Cheapest Products
People who live frugally often times end up buying the cheapest products available to them in order to save money. This can be a bad thing for many reasons. The first reason is that cheaper products are generally lower in quality. The saying, “you get what you pay for” is very applicable here.

There many cases where always buying cheap can bring you harm. If you don’t know a thing about cars, but decide to fix your breaks because you don’t want to pay a shop to do it properly, you’re putting your safety at risk. If you make a mistake, you could end up in an accident that will cost far more than getting your breaks fixed properly at a shop. Another way you can end up hurting yourself by always buying cheap is if you only buy and eat the least expensive food you can find. Imagine if you were to eat nothing but cup noodles for years. Your health would certainly deteriorate, which could cost you big bucks later on.

Another reason why buying cheap products is a bad ideas is you might have to replace them frequently, which again can cost you more in the end. There are many reasons why buying cheap isn’t always the best idea.

2. Being Seen As Cheap
One of the biggest problems with living a frugal lifestyle is that doing so can make you look cheap. Being seen as cheap won’t completely ruin your reputation, but it will definitely take a hit. If you do any of the following on a regular basis, you might be living a little too frugally:

• Complaining about how expensive things are
• Tipping too little
• Refusing to participating in social activities because of money
• Being a mooch

Everyone has a different perception of money and how it should be spent, but in most social settings, it’s best to have a more relaxed attitude towards money. It’s definitely good, and even healthy to maintain frugal spending habits, but if your frugality is too visible, you can definitely be doing yourself a disservice. So the next time you’re at a restaurant with your friends and everything costs more than what you’d like to pay, just keep your mouth shut and try enjoy the evening. You and your friends will be better off because of it.

3. Missed Opportunities
If you’re too frugal, you’ll miss out on opportunities that could improve the quality of your life more than having a few extra bucks in your bank account. Frugal people tend to shy away from spending money on vacations, high end dining, and expensive hobbies. While these things are by no means essential to living a happy life, they do still hold value. Especially when you’re young, unmarried, and not tied down by a serious career, you have a lot of freedom to do what you want. If you choose you keep your money locked down, you’ll miss out on many opportunities you would otherwise take if you were less frugal.

4. Requires Too Much Discipline
Let’s say you’re at work and forget to pack a lunch and end up starving yourself because you don’t want to spend money on a deli sandwich. While that might appeal to your frugal side, it doesn’t make much sense and requires a tremendous amount of discipline.

If you have disposable income, it’s definitely good to save as much of it as possible, but if you’re going to incredible lengths to do so, you lose in the end. Going back to the example of forgetting to pack a lunch for work, would you really agonize through the entire afternoon instead of paying five dollars for a sandwich? Is that agony really worth five measly dollars? Very likely not, which illustrates just how much commitment and discipline is required to live a very frugal lifestyle.

5. No Clear Goals
If you live a frugal lifestyle, that’s great, but do you have any clear financial goals? If your goal is just to save money, that really isn’t very meaningful. What happens when you’re on your death bed and you have piles of money but nothing to do with it? If you choose to live a frugal lifestyle, make sure you have some sort of long term goal in mind. You could buy a house, finance an education, or start a business with the money you save. Whatever you decide to do, make sure there is a purpose to your frugal ways.