On Being Frugal

There are people now going around claiming to be the New Evangelists of Frugality. "Frugalistas", I've heard them called. This, of course got me to thinking. How do you know if you're actually being frugal or just stingy?

Frugality isn't about putting price first. It's closer to the engineering idea of "elegance", where you spend exactly the right amount for the desired result. Go for the lowest price you don't get what you wanted, pay too much and and you're losing the opportunity to use that money for some other thing. It's a dynamic idea that requires you to constantly monitor the quality of your expenditures, not just of money, but of time, effort, emotional involvement and all the other things an experience can cost.

For instance -- I used to ride a motorcycle to work -- it cost less than half the money as driving a car, and because a motorcycle is considered a high-occupancy vehicle I could use the car-pool lanes, which allowed me to time with my family I would have spent idling in gridlock. Financial, temporal and ecological efficiency resulting in a higher quality daily journey -- elegance. But when the price of gas tripled the financial gain was lost. My daily fuel cost exceeded the price of a bus ticket, so I switched to public transit to bring the monetary expense back down to budget levels. The time spent commuting is back up where it was, but it wasn't lost -- the time I spend in transit is MY time, and I spend it reading the paper or (even better) working on knitting my community back together by talking about anything but work with my fellow transit captives, something today's work-centric attitudes have prevented from happening almoist completely, and something I was unable to do while riding my motorcycle.

A job differs from welfare and social security only in that it can be terminated without due process. The key to becoming a frugal person is in recognizing that for whatever reason you are on a fixed income. Money, energy, good spirits, all are limited resources. Once you accept that little truth frugality becomes the difference between surviving and living.

Peace,
Robert”