my friend's life style

It seems I don't get many replies to my forum posts so I'll try with this one. I am
interested to hear about people's life styles, how expensive things are for you
and how you handle your money.

I am not rich so I keep a certain amount of money saved for emergencies. When an emergency happens and it take a big bite out of my savings then I stop spending money for a until I have enough saved again in case of another emergency.

When I first start in life and I was young I was terrible with money and never had any because I'd spend all as soon as I got it. I could never afford nice things because I didn't how to save money. I was this way until I lived with a Chinese Malay friend who was so cheap he bought new underwear once every 2 years, seriously.

He got me interested in travel and to travel I needed lots of money so when I decided I wanted to leave Canada for the first time and take a trip to Indonesia I started saving all of my receipts and going over them to analyze my spending habits.

In a short period I realized my #1 expense was cigars, my #2 expense was buying drinks, potato chips, candy and other things when I went to get my cigars and my #3 was going to the store in the morning to buy cigars and then buying breakfast, coffee and lunch to take with me to work. So I decided to stop smoking and when my next pay cheque came in, I had nothing to spend it on because I had stopped going to the store.

Now each year I predict how much money I'll need for the entire year for all bills, rent, transportation and other necessary items. Once I have that figured out then I start aggressively saving all of my available income until I reach that goal, sometimes putting the majority in stocks. During this time I live without any extra luxury and don't go to restaurants or shops or buy useless things and instead I spend the minimum possible and just eat tuna, noodles, carrots or other inexpensive food.

After I have achieved my goal and I feel comfortable then I start spending all my available income on eating at nice places and buying gifts. I don't buy myself very many things because I've always been accustomed to not buying myself stuff so instead I spend money on my friends and family.

That's how I do it, how do you do it?