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A lot of us claim to be frugal, including me at times, but I wonder, are we all on the same page defining frugal?
Frugality is typically defined as a mindful approach to spending that prioritizes value, efficiency, and sustainability. It’s about making conscious choices that align with your financial goals and values.
That doesn’t sound like fun, seems like work.
Do we limit discretionary purchases in favor of necessities? Are we focused on finding the best deal or seeking low-cost alternatives? Do we consciously avoid impulse buying? Do we focus on living within our means? Does being frugal mean walking from room to room turning off lights?
Is our life driven by these decisions? Was there a time when frugality was necessary and you simply can’t change your ways?
For me the answer is yes, no, sometimes. We certainly live within our means. On the other hand, if we were to take a cruise, there would not be an inside cabin. For Connie’s 85th birthday my impulse buying got the better of me. I’d buy a brand name product at the dollar store, but not some unknown no matter what the savings.
Are you really frugal and why?
I am a CPA and my kids will tell you that stands for Cheapest Person Around. When times were tight, I probably was. But now in retirement, I am on the SKI trip (Spending the Kids Inheritance) and have been known to drive 2 hours for a pizza. And yes, it is that good.
Being frugal has never been an adjective or descriptive term used to describe me.
In my lifetime, I have truly been blessed. I come from a military family, growing up as an army brat. I barely graduated from high school with a relatively poor academic record. I joined the US Army and it was while in basic training, after taking all the aptitude tests, that I found out that instead of being “below average,” I was actually pretty darned smart.
Living up to the expectations established for me in the US Army, after my enlistment, and serving my year in Viet Nam, from 1969-1970, I started college. Over the years I earned 6 different degrees, and finished my education journey as ABD, All But Dissertation. in my doctoral studies.
From my very first job after the military, where I began for $500 a month with a company car provided, I spent 28 years in banking, finance, lending. Then I spent 12 years in financial services, as an agency owner, followed by 15 years as a college professor, teaching financial services.
I married at 23, just celebrated my 50th anniversary, and like I said…my life has been blessed. Never missed a meal, never paid a bill late, never went broke (got close a few times,) and basically bought whatever we need and paid for it, using credit at times. I did look for deals, and I was always inclined to buy “Better,” of the choices “Good, Better or Best.”
Like many parents, I gave my kids most of what they wanted. Thankfully my daughter never wanted a pony or horse, and my son loved his Ford Ranger Truck at 16, and thought it was great. My kids knew A’s & B’s drive to school. C’s took the bus. They both had new Ford Rangers.
Financially, I was never really highly paid, until my 50’s. In all of them money I earned from 1967-2024, over 59% was earned in 15 of those years, and as you might imagine, 14 of those 15 years were after 2009.
I retired in January, and 2 months ago I decided to write down every dollar we spent for the next 90 days, to get a better handle on our expenses. The results have shown that my profligate pending, common in the past, is still going full force, and it will be coming to an end. Over the next 30 days, as I finish my 90 days on recording all spending, I will be reestablishing out retirement budget.
The good news is we have more than adequate income and assets. So will I be becoming more frugal in the near future. I think to an extent yes, but not miserly. Additional good news is I am actually at the stage in life that if I really wanted something, I have probably bought it, so “cutting back” will not be a real sacrifice.
Thank You God for all the blessings you have bestowed on me in my lifetime. I will continue to share those gifts with others, as has been my practice for years. Amen
Kevin, what I can’t understand is why it took a 90-day detailed tracking of all spending to show you that your spending was too high? Surely you know as you spending that well, you are spending and where and how.
For the first 10 years of professional life frugality was a necessity and not necessarily fun, but as time has passed the balance is now more fun frugality than necessity. Some things are habit, some have been learned from the wisdom of others: the Swedish Death Cleaning and Marie Kondo books made big impacts on our materialism. We had an enormous amount of books and when Kondo recommended dividing the number of books by likely years of life remaining, it didn’t take mathematical genius to see we were serious self-deceivers. I then went crazy applying this same exercise to clothing, streaming services, food and items stored for a rainy day, etc. We aren’t extreme minimalists yet, but we’re closer to that now than we were in our 20s.
Yes, I have been accused by many of being frugal…or cheap is the impolite way of describing me!! But, finally, I’m changing….last week made a major purchase for wife, family and me that is the opposite of being frugal. After weighing all the pros/cons (spreadsheet and all!….can’t get away from that approach!!), I just said the hell with it and made the purchase!! I justified it by telling myself if I did not make that expenditure, it just goes to the kids. So, the hell with the kids and for once my wife/I decided to do what we want to do!!
The source of being cheap? That’s easy. Growing up, we did not have 2 nickels to rub together!!! Although things have changed, fortunately, that early approach to spending is difficult to change!!!
Garrett..On of my mentors in the financial services world was a marvelous gentleman, Tom Hegna.
Tom trains advisors after decades management and supervision in large financial institutions. He is a trained economist and a Retired Colonel in the US Army Reserves.
On the subject of seniors being frugal, and not spending the money they have and could afford to spend, he has a few lines that goes something like…
“Join The country Club, Buy That Boat. Take that Cruise, Buy the Car you always wanted. If you don’t, Your children will. They will be driving their new car, to lunch at the country club, on their way to the Airport. leaving on their Trip or Cruise.”
We used to be a lot more frugal but our portfolio grew by a lot.
There are several things we still frugal about and make sense to us
1) We always preferred cheaper B&B hotels
2) We buy new vehicles since 1994 starting with Honda,Toyota, and now Hyundai and Kia. The last 2 are very quiet and drive well as vehicles which cost a lot more which I tried too.
3) Electronics are the ultimate to be frugal. Many of them cost a fraction of the price of the expensive ones and they do almost everything. My track watch costs me $25 instead of Apple at $350.
Just bought a refurbished business laptop for $250 instead of $1500. This laptop is better than a new retail one for $600-800.
Also bought a refurbished Pixel for $170 instead of $800-1000. I used to think that refurbished isn’t for me until I tried it. Of course you need to know where to buy it.
4) We always buy the cheapest airline tickets direct or with on stop if we fly to Europe.
There are so much more.
I refused to give up the good stuff but I keep finding frugal ways to get it.
I am more than frugal: I am cheap. I am happy with what I have, which is mostly useful items. I do love traveling, cruising, tours, etc and that is what the pennies saved goes to. For me, that’s the best value.
I agree with most everyone that we splurge on those things that are meaningful for us (in my case grandkids 529s, upscale travel places, hosting friends at our home, and some concerts and events). As we age paying others to do the chores that we physically can no longer do is a wonderful thing. Yet I still channel my dad by shutting off lights, getting every gram of toothpaste out of the container and using the soap till it’s a nub.
Does anyone else hoard the little bars of soap in hotel rooms?
We (by that I mean I) unwrap the first small hotel bar use for hands and showers then rewrap, gather the rest, and the don’t open any of the other bars and bring them home.
I still have seven bars left from a week vacation in April.
Let’s see with the money I saved from not buying shower soap bars, invested with a seven percent return….😂
I’m fussy about soap and travel with my own. At least in Europe hotels are now using those refillable pump bottles, bolted to the wall.
Do you actually use those tiny ones? A friend has a basket of them in the bathroom but the contents never seem to shrink.
Yes we use and reuse tiny at the first hotel, wrap it up and continue to use it at subsequent hotels. One usually lasts entire vacation, and the rest are hauled home.
I also have a little collection of hotel soaps. I grab the ones we opened and bring them home. I know the soaps will be thrown away so it’s an environmental thing for me.
You sound like me. Grandchildren don’t know how to turn off lights.
It must be an age thing, the way we were raised. I still struggle with the “clean your plate there are children starving in Africa” don’t waste food thing. Seventy-five years later and children are still starving and I could lose a few pounds because I’m programmed to not waste food.
If you saw my physique despite working out six times a week for thirty plus years you would be correct if you thought I was a member of the club as well.
I’m of Armenian heritage and apparently there was a thing in the 1920s to “clean your plate, think of the starving Armenians.” Looking at myself in the mirror I think those parents are kids are responsible for my current situation;)
Frugal can be a tricky thing. What’s frugal for you might be a waste of precious time or lost happiness for me. For example: turning out the lights has far less appeal in our house in the Pacific Northwest through much of the year. Between clouds and latitude it’s way darker and gloomier here than NJ; light is a cheap source of cheer to me.
And I do mean cheap: LED bulbs today use very little electricity compared to incandescent or even fluorescent bulbs, and last way longer too.
Frugality is a good habit, but like so many things in finance it can be very personal too.
I grew up in England, which is further north than Oregon and where it gets dark very early in winter. I was still expected to turn off the lights when I left a room if no-one was in it. I still do.
“That doesn’t sound like fun, seems like work.”
I thought you were objecting in a previous post to shopping being fun. I don’t enjoy shopping and I do as little of it as possible. It’s why some of my clothes are twenty plus years old, and my car is a 2007. That said, if I am going to have to make a major purchase I want value for money, and I may succumb to some minor feature creep.
Being frugal is how I managed fifteen years travel without going broke. I actually prefer old style B&Bs and pensions to posh hotels, and travel by train to flying. But I used to say, with some truth, that I slept cheap so I could eat well. It all comes down to your priorities.
There isn’t one definition of frugal because being frugal – spendthrift is a continuous spectrum.
Personally I’d say that if you automatically reach for the branded product over the store brand or regularly use phrases like “buy cheap, buy twice” you probably aren’t day to day frugal.
My view is of course biased by a lot of time working with FMCG businesses where not a single person has ever personally convinced me that their product had sufficient real advantages to meet the price differential, rather than higher status brandname, arbitrary marketing innovation, new and improved flavour etc. Of course their innovation and marketing spend and size of organisation tends to necessitate that their products cost more but in terms of value as consumed I’m not sure I buy it.
That said I have some expensive hobbies that necessitate a lot of travel. I’ll happily stay a drive away from where I really want to be or in a cheaper mo/hotel though because it’s about the activity not the spa pool or quality of the towels. And I’ll just as happy eat takeout from the supermarket deli as a full restaurant experience. Any $ saved pays for me doing more of the thing I love.
Last week I sat on a rock high in the mountains and remarked to my companion as we ate sandwiches that we made up ourselves that being billionaires couldn’t have made that moment any better, the food tastier, the view superior. Sometimes/most times you don’t need the A+ package.
I love this! My husband and I also have expensive hobbies. And we abide by the same rules you do–save money on things that don’t matter to us (eating out, ‘fancy’ lodging) in order to be able to spend more on the things we do love.
That makes sense, spend on what really matters to you, but in the aggregate does trading one spending for another change the frugality factor in your opinion?
I’d guess no one here is really by necessity subsistence level frugal.
So given that we do spend the question is why and what we spend our discretionary expenditure on. And that’s where we differ as individuals, whether we get the mechanical reassurance or ego boost of driving a new car, whether we’ve been to some obscure places most people couldn’t find on a map or in the crowd at great sporting or cultural events.
So the concept of frugality once past subsistence level is really about purpose. FIRE extremists have their own version which is about investing maximum income to hit the earliest possible FI date. Most of the rest of us probably trade down tactically or strategically on things we don’t value in order to liberate funds for things we do ( and a retirement nestegg may be one of those).
It can however be hard for average earners to make a meaningful impact if they are also maintaining “average” patterns of consumption. Those Nike kicks, the case of Diet Coke , the Starbucks latte with a pastry all add up even for quite mundane expenditure before we get anywhere near premium status goods. And as investors we should be glad they do because comsumption is the great engine in the markets.
I think that means frugality is not necessarily about denying oneself name brand soda or grubbing around in Goodwill for sneakers, but it is about making conscious decisions around what that aggregates as and whether it is an acceptable opportunity cost. For reference 1 month’s car payment probably = return coach airfare US- Europe.
I’m sure I will reach an age or point in my life when frugality serves no further purpose other than to feather the bed of my heirs i.e. I simply will not be able to spend what remains before expiry.
For those that have always tended toward the frugal the major challenge is perhaps tapering out of frugality to really maximise on the time vs money equation.
Beyond those who have no choice, I doubt there are many truly overall frugal people and of those I would ask why.
Most of us are frugal in some areas of our spending but not others, but overall are we truly frugal? I doubt it.
Why not? There are many pleasures that require little if any expenditure. I enjoy reading, and I own quite a lot of books, but these days the library provides almost every book I read. I enjoy walking when the weather is nice, and I have a choice of free parks to do it in. Spending time with friends is only expensive if you choose to make it so. You can spend a great deal of money on a car, but you can buy a more than adequate new one, never mind used, for much less. The new car smell will wear off quickly.
Well because you’re American your concept of what is frugal probably looks like unfettered excess to most of the world.
But as explained frugal isn’t a game you win at. There isn’t an award for the biggest miser sitting on the biggest pot of gold achieved through the most self denial. For most people it’s about turning it up and down appropriately. If you can’t be frugal at all it’s hard to get past month to month cashflowing your life even on sizeable salaries let alone starting up savings etc. If you’re excessively frugal you deny yourself life experiences or you end up trading free time for immaterial money saving.
You can create a line item for the discretionary needs within your budget. Auto transfers are magic.
I’ve been in enough homes in Europe to know you are right. We also have friends in the UK and Paris. We have been to their homes. They are comfortable, but small and without what many Americans would see as necessities.
The UK folks have been to our Cape Cod house and our Parisian friend is coming next month. To be honest I am a bit embarrassed, especially because it’s not where we live.
I’m sure hoping there’s no connection between the sentence about impulse buying for Connie’s birthday and the following sentence about buying a brand name product at the dollar store.
If you knew Connie, you would know how funny that is. Is there a jewelry dollar store?
Hilarious Ken!
Based on some research with children on delayed gratification, there is some evidence of a genetic difference between those are thrifty and those who are not. If you bring that box of donuts home, can you eat just one? Lots of people cannot.
Do you know a married couple that consists of one spender and one saver? There are many. These marriages can be challenging. Sometimes I have described marriage as if one person is rowing the wooden boat and bailing out the boat while the other is drilling holes in the bottom of the boat.
How can some folks quit alcohol or tobacco instantly while for others it is a lifetime struggle.
We like to think that we are in control of what we do or don’t do and think the same way about other people. What if a lot of how we behave is not totally within our control?
I think you touch on an important point. Delayed gratification may be the single biggest influence on how people live their financial lives. I loved the book “The Marshmallow Test”. It helped me learn so much about myself, as well as other people in my life.
As soon as I read the first couple of chapters, I knew exactly how I would have responded to this test of delayed gratification. I would have been the child who not only didn’t eat the marshmallow, but who also saved it and took it home to show her parents. I don’t know if it’s possible to have too much delayed gratification, but if so…
I don’t like marshmallows, so it wouldn’t have been a fair test. But I deal with things I do like that should be eaten in moderation by dispensing a set amount and putting the container back in the cupboard, so I figure I pass.
I agree. People living with depression often shop and spend money to try to cope. That was certainly a challenge in my first marriage.
For me the answer is yes, no, sometimes. That pretty much sums up my feelings about this question. While I’m about wants versus needs, I occasionally have to quote a line from the 80s movie Risky Business; Sometimes you just have to say WTF. Life is too short to do otherwise.
Hi Dick, I love this and looking forward to see what others write. We have always been frugal. It is a lifestyle. We are not cheap, there is a difference, I think. We cut back on things that don’t matter as much to us in day to day expenses, but splurge on other things. One example is we buy store brands at the grocery. Sometimes buying the more expensive item is the frugal choice. Spouse is still wearing an LL Bean winter parka that is a classic style, but was bought in the 1980s. We went on the Alaska cruise, which is not frugal, but a once in a lifetime experience, and splurged on any of the excursions we wanted to do. But we didn’t buy the drink package, opting instead to mostly drink the free beverages and we got an occasional wine or cocktail if we wanted one. Chris
Well said, Chris. I agree that being frugal and being cheap are not the same thing. Not by a long shot. Remembering that “price is what you pay, while value is what you get”, one can avoid or at least minimize frivolous expenditures (as one chooses to define them) while simultaneously being generous towards others.