Ah, I think this sums me up too. As a lifelong New Englander there’s definitely a heap of Yankee frugality in my up-bringing but I’m more ‘shop for the best bargain’ than ‘revel in self-deprivation.’
Well, I was going to say Absolutely, and am proud of it. Not to the level of self-deprivation, but certainly I try to avoid conspicuous consumption.
But now I’m not so sure.
I’ve always felt that any kind of conspicuous consumption was ridiculous. I believe that a significant portion of the things that we tend to desire are things that we’ve been conditioned to want by our family, friends, neighbors, or just via social trends. Buying the newest cars, owning RV’s or travel trailers, spending money on high-end (or even just what’s currently popular) home furnishings is all fueled by what’s in style. Obviously personal preferences come into play but I think there’s a “keeping up with the Jonses” element to a lot of what we spend our money on.
My wife and I spent a lot of years living as paupers, having, as FCM said above, $20 to our name with empty fuel tanks, empty pantry shelves, two hungry kids, and 3 days till payday. Now that we have a much more robust income stream we still live on a shoestring budget because, frankly, it’s more important for us to have money in the bank than name-brand cereal or screwdrivers or whatever. A lot of the money-saving tips noted in this thread – combining errands into one trip, shopping sales, reducing heating and cooling costs by adjusting other conditions – we do without thinking about it. It’s just how we live. By doing so we saved up enough to put a 35% down payment on a $300K house, pay off all our debt except student loans (and those are small enough that the new loan forgiveness program will wipe out about 80% of what we still owe), and now have absolutely no consumer debt. Frankly, it’s much nicer having money in the bank instead of shiny things.
However, there are times when we do splurge. We have some valuable artwork, including originals by Charles Russell and André Derain. These are things we can’t show off and nobody really knows about – even visitors to the house don’t get to see the Derain – but we knew they would be something we would enjoy having so we chose to acquire them. If we go the ballet or the theater we get the best seats we can, we feel the cost is irrelevant if it’s a show we want to see. On the rare occasions when we go out to eat we ignore the menu prices and get what sounds good. There are some limits of course. I’d like to travel back east for the next eclipse in 2024, maybe meet another Doper or two, and check out parts of the country that I haven’t yet seen but I doubt I’ll actually do that. Some things just aren’t practical.
So, thinking about this existentially, my splurging on artwork or theater tickets is not that different from someone splurging on top shelf wine or good coffee or a high-end car. If it brings them joy then, really, the process is not dissimilar to what I’m spending money on to bring myself joy. If I spend a big chunk of change on a piece of art from an obscure French painter that nobody but my wife and I get to see while my neighbor spends a big chink of change on a new Class A motorhome that he parks in front of his house just to flaunt it, are we all that much different? Hell if I know. My consumption is much less conspicuous than my neighbor’s but it’s still consumption.
But I still would rather have money than things.
No. I like a good bargain and am thrifty in some ways. I don’t closely follow trends, I have confidence in my own sense of style, I don’t need (or usually want) the latest thing. I want convenience without having to pay for it. But I accept others need to make a profit, some trade-offs are worth paying for, some things I cannot do well, I am unexcited by deprivation for its own sake, and I assume no one much cares for what I paid for anything. The only thing I like about minimalism is its environmental impact. Also, I am not a bastard in any sense. I am confused by people much impressed by things like bottle service.
Eh, I’m sort of an odd mixture of cheap bastard and spendthrift. In general I don’t much care about money, and tend to not pay much attention to price, especially with smaller items like groceries. My heating and cooling settings are what makes me most comfortable. I have no idea what I’d save with more economical settings and don’t really care.
OTOH, I pay a lot more attention to regular recurring costs. I have the cheapest possible cell service, with no data plan. I have no TV cable service at all, mainly because I have a decent antenna and rarely watch TV anyway, and have many sources for entertainment like movies.
I’d definitely call myself somewhat frugal, but there are a few different elements here.
I am definitely an optimizer in the sense that Voyager described. Few things give me more pleasure than to root out some inefficiency in the way I’m doing something. I bought a whole-house power meter recently and it gave me great joy to discover and fix several wasteful power consumers.
There are a lot of things where I am fairly indifferent to the quality. Food is a big one here. It’s just not that big a deal for me. If I’m paying for anything, it’ll be convenience (and even then, not always–I refuse to pay for food delivery). That said, there are a few areas where I splurge occasionally (like for sushi).
But the big one, I think, is that spending money is so much work. My sister bought a beach house recently. She goes a couple of weeks a year and rents it out the rest of the time. She puts in a lot of effort for upkeep and refurbishment, and obviously the entire process of buying a house and dealing with the mortgage and utility bills and everything else is a lot of effort.
It just sounds so goddamn tedious to me. There’s no upside that seems worth all that effort. A couple weeks of fun a year–fun that could be accomplished in other ways–in exchange for mounds of paperwork and planning and other nonsense.
I could afford a small house up in Lake Tahoe. It seems to be the popular thing among Bay Areaites. I like the mountains and being in nature. But the whole process would be way more effort than I’m willing to put in. Even just visiting the place, with a fairly long drive, and then having to do a bunch of secondary household stuff like buying groceries and all that, seems tedious. Bleh.
That’s just one example. Extra cars, motorcycles, RVs, super complicated vacations, etc. just seem like so much work to me. Hell, even things like hiring cleaning services are more effort than I’m willing to put in. You have to shop around for a decent one, and then tell them exactly how you want things cleaned, and still worry about theft or that they’ll just break your stuff, and blah blah… easier just to do it myself.
I’m still looking for uncomplicated ways to spend my money. I have to admit that Amazon gets a lot of my money for that reason alone.
I consider myself “thrifty” but not silly about it. But my father, that man was a true miser if ever there was one!
I used to be thrifty about everything, but then my mother in law died and left us a pile of money and I thought, why am I worrying about this shit? So now I spend money on the things that matter to me, such as my horses’ vet, authentic restoration of our 1790 farmhouse, and organic food. We’ve always been Luddites and last-adopters, and that hasn’t changed, it’s just our style. Although it saves a lot of money that is not why I do it.
I’m not cheap, I guess. My husband has cheap bastard tendencies though.
My parents grew up in the Great Depression, and they tried to turn us into misers. But it didn’t always work.
Dad wanted me to learn how to fix my car, so I would save lots of money. The main thing I learned is that I would much rather pay a professional, who has the shop and the tools to do things quickly and correctly.
On the other hand, two of my favorite restaurants are the kind of places where the food is mainly a set-up to sell you an expensive bottle of wine. Being a teetotaler has saved me a lot of money.
No, I am not a cheap bastard, in fact, I really ought to become one. My problem has always been spending too much.
I loathe all kinds of shopping (except for food) so whilst I’m a cheap bastid in general, I tend to splurge (within reason) on all sorts of delicacies of the food kind: not super extravagant, but I don’t look at the prices of ingredients needed for meals.
But I buy cheap clothing, often from Goodwill stores and only when I actually need something. I only buy furnishings or electrical goods is something is broken. My life is uncluttered by ‘things’ and it makes my heart lighter, in fact, apart from a couple of boxes of personal papers stored at home in Aus, my entire life at the moment fits into a medium sized suitcase!
There’s no virtue in not buying something that has no added value for you. I spend as much as it takes to satisfy my needs just like most people. Granted, some people’s needs are to impress others with the cost of their possessions. That might be a vice; but the absence of a vice isn’t a virtue.
This is too often forgotten.
No.
The one thing I abhor, though, is food waste. So while I buy what we like to eat and don’t worry much about the cost, I’ve become very good at inventory control and use virtually all of what I buy.
We also fix/refurbish what we can, recycle and donate anything that’s in good shape and that we no longer use to others who can.
I don’t consider myself frugal at all. When it comes to food products, I only buy the best. The steaks we buy (maybe once a month) are ridiculously expensive, but absolutely delicious. When I have served them to friends, they are stunned at how good they are.
On the other hand, I really don’t have many ‘toys’ I could afford, say, a boat. Not interested.
The vehicles I buy, I drive into the ground. But I buy the best of what I need regardless of cost. I consider vehicles, tractors, and plow trucks tools that I need. Only buy the best.
Chain saw? Or similar stuff? Only buy the best. Helped a neighbor cut a tree for firewood last week, he had some sort of cheep saw. Broke on him. My saw barely got a workout.
I don’t agree. The ability to avoid temptation is a virtue, in and of itself.
That said, this specific situation has a lot more potential virtues than that. Being able to reduce the amount of desire you have for material things is a virtue. There is value in not making the consumption problem that is causing pollution worse, as well as value in reducing your contribution to the exploitation of workers–even if one cannot stop completely.
The question is at what point can frugality can become a vice. For instance, you could do it simply to feel like you’re superior to everyone else. Or, yes, it could become some sort of controlling behavior, a way to assert one’s dominance over someone else.
And, of course, there’s the issue of hoarding wealth, when it could be used to help others and make the world better. Being frugal so you can help others is good. Being frugal to win imaginary points is not.
I don’t know - it kind of depends. If I don’t taste any difference between the inexpensive coffee and the expensive coffee, I’m definitely buying the cheap coffee. If I don’t care about the difference between the supermarket cake and the bakery cake, I’m buying the supermarket cake. But although I might not buy the $200 shoes at $200 , I will buy them if I can get them for $100 and I will never buy the $20 shoes.
Well, of course not! That would fly in the face of the Vimes Theory.
I should have remembered Vimes - no, I won’t buy the $20 shoes even if they are flip-flops that I only expect to last for one summer because the style will be different next year.
I think of “cheap bastard” as a description of how one treats others rather than of personal consumption. That guy who never pays for a round or picks up the meal cheque? Cheap bastard. Serves bad food at a party? Cheap bastard. And by “bad food,” I mean food purchased, prepared, and served with no thought, care, or attention, regardless of actual cost. Borrows my car and doesn’t put some gas in it? Cheap bastard. What the cheap bastards do on their own time is entirely up to them and I wouldn’t apply the category to them.
In my life? Like some others here, I try to apply the Vimes theory, am what some might consider extravagant in some areas (books, pencils, good hotels when hotels are necessary) and “stingy” in others (rarely drink, never eat fast food, rarely eat at restaurants, avoid flying as much as possible)
I am thinking that the virtue of avoiding temptations that don’t in fact tempt you is not much of a virtue, even though it may look similar to someone straining every fiber to abstain.
For example I don’t have any desire to impress anyone with the things I own, so it’s not a virtue for me to resist it. Same with most (not all) high-priced indulgences.
A lot of people enjoy living a cheapskate life – it may be laudable to live frugally as a rule, but if you enjoy it, is it a virtue, or just a lifestyle?