Frugality: The Opposite of Being Cheap

This following guest article was written by Richard Hemby who regularly writes about accredited online degrees and college related topics for Online College Guru, an online college degree guide.

Those who practice a frugal lifestyle are occasionally accused of being “cheap” or miserly. Nothing could be farther from the truth, however; frugality is a philosophy and a lifestyle that is based upon generosity of spirit and care for the well-being of other beings. By only accumulating those things that are truly necessary and essential for life and health, one consumes fewer precious resources. This, in turn, allows more people to enjoy the same basic necessities than would otherwise be possible.

Frugality is not a lack of charity or kindness to others. It is rather the careful assessment of each purchase to determine whether or not that purchase will truly improve one’s life and happiness, and whether the item in question is a wise use of the planet’s limited resources. When considered in this light, frugality is the application of the Golden Rule to the consumer lifestyle with a minor twist; frugal individuals do without so that others may have enough.

Cheap or miserly people may neglect to tip wait staff; this is a symptom of greed and selfishness. Those practicing a frugal lifestyle might avoid dining out altogether, but if they chose to do so, they would still consider the needs of others and tip in order to ensure that the wait staff too would have enough to live on. While a cheap person might wear the same suit for years on end, they would do so in order to keep the savings for themselves. Frugal individuals have a different motivation; by keeping items until they are thoroughly worn out, they can avoid putting further strain on the already overtaxed resources of the planet and prevent waste being added to already filled-to-overflowing landfills.

A frugal person may carry a cloth handkerchief for personal hygiene needs; a cheap one may help himself to a handful of paper products from a local restaurant. This highlights the primary difference between cheapness and frugality. Cheapness affects the lives of others, while frugality affects only oneself. Cheap actions are characterized by selfishness and disregard for others, while frugality’s defining characteristic is valuing others as highly as oneself. A cheap person may seek a deal at the cost of another person; a frugal one will try to make a deal that benefits both people in the end.

Practicing frugality is not just a matter of living simply and avoiding unnecessary purchases. It is also demonstrated by choosing options that are environmentally responsible, ethical, and mindful of the needs and feelings of other people. Keynes had it right: resources are limited, but wants are endless. Frugal individuals practice discipline and contain their wants to a reasonable level in an effort to ensure that there are sufficient resources to go around.

While being cheap is generally a personality trait, rather than a conscious choice, frugality is a decision reinstated each and every day. By choosing their purchases carefully and thoughtfully and considering the value of each purchase as it relates to the most basic human needs, frugal people truly “tread lightly upon the earth,” taking only their fair share of limited resources and making it possible for others to live as well as they do.

Simplicity Redefined: Be Open to What Emerges

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” - Lao Tzu

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow him on Twitter.

One of the things we’re told by productivity gurus is that we need to have clearly defined goals or outcomes — the better defined it is, the more likely you’ll achieve it.

And this is true, to some extent. It’s worked for me, when I visualized my goals and set my mind to achieving it, and took small action steps to get there … I achieved my goals.

It works … and yet, it’s not the only way. In fact, depending on your outlook on life, it may not be the ideal way.

The problem with focusing on the outcome is that things don’t always turn out that way. And when they don’t, you’ll often end up either 1) trying to force something when it shouldn’t be forced; or 2) being hugely disappointed or frustrated.

Here’s a method that embraces simplicity:

Don’t try to force outcomes — let them happen. Be open to what emerges.

This is a change that I’ve been trying in my life over the last year or more — slowly, gradually, because it’s not always easy. You have to learn to let go of the need to achieve certain outcomes, to embrace the flow, and that can be very difficult. So I’ve learned to embrace it slowly, and it has been wonderful.

Goals Made Simple
One of the most common questions I’m asked when interviewed is, “So what are your plans for Zen Habits in the next year or two?” And my answer is, “I have no plans. I just want to keep enjoying what I’m doing, do the best I can, and see what arises.”

This is a radically different approach from the way many people do things. It’s not necessarily better, but it has worked well for me.

The reason I’ve taken this approach is that when I started Zen Habits, I had absolutely no idea it would take off. I thought, “If I can have a thousand readers after a year or two, I’ll be happy. If I make a couple hundred bucks a month, it’ll be a nice side income.” Well, a year later, I had 30 times the number of readers I had hoped for, and had enough income to quit my day job.

Not only that, but in that time I also released a best-selling ebook (Zen To Done) and signed a book deal with a major publisher. How could I have known that would have happened when I started Zen Habits? It would have been impossible.

The lesson I learned: you don’t know what will happen, or what opportunities will arise, until you arrive at that moment. You can plan and plan and plan, but there is just no way to know how things will turn out. And if my plan doesn’t include an opportunity that I didn’t see coming, I might miss that opportunity. Sure, I could continually adjust my plans based on changing circumstances … but then, what’s the point of the plan?

Instead, I have forgone the need to define outcomes, and have focused on enjoying the journey. That doesn’t mean I’m not motivated to do my best — I am — nor does it mean that I take a lackadaisical attitude toward my work (although I do get lazy, like anyone else). It means that I’m motivated by the work, that I enjoy the activity, not by the destination, goal or outcome.

“Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.” - John Gay, English poet & dramatist

Another example is fitness: while I do set goals with myself (lose my bellyfat, for example), I have learned not to worry so much about those goals. They’ll come, or maybe they won’t. Instead, I’ve learned to focus on eating enjoyable foods that are healthy, and stay active on most days. As a result, I don’t sweat it when things don’t go according to plan — because there’s really no set plan. If I eat some treats at a party, it’s no problem. If I don’t go for a workout one day, no sweat. I’ll get back to it the next day, and even then I might still eat some chocolate for the pure joy of it all. I still get fitter and healthier, and most importantly I enjoy the journey along the way.

Be Open to What Emerges
This is the hardest part about this approach: if you aren’t striving for a particular outcome, you won’t know what will happen. This lack of knowing is difficult — people like the security of predicting and controlling the future with goals and plans. Letting go of that security is scary.

Here’s the thing: that security is an illusion. We have no way to predict the future. We cannot control it. We can try (and we do try), but we fail, all the time. We chalk it up to “plans gone wrong” or making mistakes or not planning for contingencies, but the truth is, we just need to admit we can’t control or predict the future.

That’s scary, I know. But it’s the truth.

And when we admit we can’t predict or plan for or control the future, what’s the next logical step? Stop setting goals and stop planning, at least in any way that controls what we do. Sure, it’s nice to know what you’re working on and working towards, but don’t make that the focus of anything.

Instead, see what emerges. And be open to it.

That’s not easy. But it can be improved with practice, and as we see that things tend to turn out OK anyway, we get more confident in this method.

The result is a way of living that doesn’t worry so much on striving for something, on pre-defined outcomes, and doesn’t try to force an outcome into becoming reality. It’s a way of living that is without high levels of stress, that doesn’t get disappointed or frustrated by goals not being met, that moves at a good pace without forcing things or despairing at mistakes or plans gone wrong.

It’s a life of simplicity redefined, and I’m loving it.

“Taoist thought stresses the need to find the state contentment, not soaring happiness nor the depths of despair. Finally, Taoism teaches to live a disciplined life and not worry so much about outcomes.” - The Rambling Taoist

This is a guest post from Leo Babauta, the author of the great site Zen Habits. If you have not already done so, please visit his insightful blog.

Why Simple Frugality is for me

 
Image by Freekz0r

Simple frugality appeals to me because it deals with many of the issues we deal with in our daily life. You should only acquire and own what you need and love.

Simple frugality is the enemy of clutter

A couple of year ago I began my quest to own less stuff. I am not as extreme as the guy wanting to down to a mere 100 things like a guy named Dave.

I have set two simple rules:

1. One thing in,one thing out

2. One less thing every week

Rule 1: One thing in, one thing out

I have had a lot of clutter in my house, and I still have more than I want. My simple rules have made it more easy to handle the de-cluttering. Every time I bring something home, I know that I have to remove something else that in a sense is being replaced. In this manner I keep status quo without a lot of effort.

Rule 2: One less thing every week

One less thing every week is also simple. I need to get rid of a thing every week. A couple of weeks ago I got rid of of a fine selection consisting of 400 cartoons. The rule is still one less thing every week so the cartoons only refer to that particular week. The next week I still need to find yet another thing to get rid of.

Simple frugality is a good way to generate less waste

If you do not bring things home, you will not need the throw away things either. The less you have, the better use you make use for it. Way too often I have seen filled fridges with items long forgotten and spoiled food in the back. If you have so many things that you forget about individual items, you have too much. The key here is not to let more clutter enter your house.

I can see the results of less clutter all the time

• Time not wasted looking for that item in a pile or stack

• Peace of mind – no more thinking about things you need to buy, store, safe keep nor repair

• Money saved that is not spent impulsively on even more things

• Less waste

I am not where I want to be yet, but I am getting there. My two simple rules are easy to follow. When a system is easy to follow, it has a better chance of being a success.

Remember to keep it simple.

Collection or merely clutter

Writer Marc Sotkin produces the website Boomer Alley, which is self-described as a “consistently entertaining, professional grade, irreverent look at the world of the Baby Boomers”.

If you can’t see the video in the post, you can find it on YouTube or Boomer Alley. Now I have to go clean out my collection of books about beer.

When You Go Too Cheap

Several days ago, my mother related to me a horror story about a particular dinner she’d prepared for herself and my father. She had purchased some extremely cheap frozen chicken breasts from a local discount grocery store at a price she just couldn’t pass up, but when she brought them home and actually prepared them, in her words, they were “inedible.” She not only threw out the chicken breasts she’d prepared, she tossed out the frozen ones, too. They were “not fit for human consumption,” in her words.

Recently, my wife and I tried out a small package of a new brand of toilet paper (new to us, anyway). It was extremely inexpensive, so we figured that even if it wasn’t nearly as good as our typical toilet paper, it was still a significant savings. Not quite. I went from using five or six squares in the bathroom to using at least twenty, plus I was still left feeling unclean. Not a good deal - in fact, we’ve already switched back to our regular brand.

I’m the biggest advocate you’ll find for seeking out the best deal you possibly can on most of the things you buy. Comparison shopping is a powerful tool. Most of the time, buying generic is just as good as buying the name brand. The grocery store flyer truly is your friend, as is making a good shopping list.

That doesn’t change one simple fact: sometimes, when you buy the bottom dollar item, you suffer for it. Sometimes, you wind up with an item that’s simply unusable, like my mother’s experience with the chicken breasts. Other times, you wind up with an item that’s so poorly made that it ends up costing you way more per use than you might have ever believed, like my own experience with the toilet paper.

Obviously, you want to avoid these traps. When you wind up with such a suboptimal product, you’ve essentially undone the benefit of bargain buying - and quite often, it ends up costing you more money than simply buying the name brand. In fact, this is an argument that many people make against generics and bargain items - if it’s not of the quality you need for your use, then it’s wasted money.

What can you do if you go too cheap and wind up with a lemon on your hands?

Just sample new things. If you’re trying out a new brand, don’t buy it in bulk. Instead, buy a small package of the item and make sure that you like it before you purchase the bulk package. This saves you from a situation where you have 36 rolls of unusable toilet paper.

Call the manufacturer. Whether or not the item is a “generic” or it’s a name brand item, you can still find a customer service number and let them know that there were problems with the product. Even with generics, you’ll sometimes get coupons or vouchers that you can use to get free replacements (if it’s just a defect in that item) or, sometimes, on other items.

Find alternate uses. If you find that the item isn’t usable for the purpose you intended it for, seek out alternate uses for it. Save the toilet paper rolls for camping season, where toilet paper makes great tinder for a camp fire. Food is a bit trickier, but some food items can be used as compost, for example.

Keep track of the “bad” brands. Trying an item, discovering it’s bad, and moving on to another one isn’t enough. You should keep track of brands that you’ve discovered aren’t up to snuff and avoid them in the future. In other words, instead of knowing the brands you prefer, keep track of the brands you prefer to avoid.

Grocery bargain hunting can save you a lot of money, but sometimes you wind up with a lemon of a product. How you handle that lemon makes all the difference when it comes to long term success. Good luck!

 

This has been a post from The Simple Dollar. Please visit give it a visit for even more articles like this one.

If You Don’t Need It, It’s Not a Deal!

The following guest post is from Jason of FrugalDad.com. Jason writes about frugal living, family finances, and other related topics at his blog.

With the holiday shopping season in full swing I am reminded of how often people rush out to buy something just because it is on sale. I admit, I enjoy saving money as much as anyone, but I’ve caught myself falling into the trap of buying something just because it is a great deal.

A few months ago a friend called me about a tool chest that had been incorrectly priced at a local Sears store. Sears was honoring the price because people were flocking to the store with sales ad in hand. I thanked him for the heads up, but pointed out that I did not need a tool chest. My garage was already crowded, and what few tools I have are comfortably stored away in toolboxes and other organizers. His response was predictable, “I don’t really need it either, but it is half price!”

Save 100% By Avoiding Sales Altogether
I was lucky in the sense that my friend called to give me a heads up and I wasn’t already in the store, where impulse decisions often lead to the purchase of things we don’t really need. In the past, I was the world’s worst at picking up stuff I didn’t need just because it had a yellow tag, or a big “SALE” sign above it. Marketers must have loved me!

If you have a habit of seeking out sales, or giving in to tempting in-store sales, I encourage you to consider Trent’s ten-second rule, something I have applied in my own life with great success. Simply stop and count to ten before tossing the item in your shopping cart. Usually, by the count of seven or eight, I have a pretty good idea whether or not I actually need the item. Most of the time it goes back on the shelf, regardless of the cost. The way I look at it, items put back on the shelf save me 100%, and no store can match that sale price.

The Same Rules Apply to Free Items
People often rationalize the accumulation of stuff because it was given to them for free. However, I would argue that stuff is not really “free.” After all, clutter is money. The more stuff you have the more you have to spend maintaining, protecting, and storing it. There are also opportunity costs to consider. Again using my own example, if my garage wasn’t so cluttered I could store used fitness equipment there and cancel my gym membership. At $30 a month, that clutter is costing me the opportunity to save $360 per year!

To make matters worse, a quick inventory of my garage reveals much of the stuff was handed down, or picked up for next to nothing at yard sales. Save the few items with sentimental value, I could probably toss seventy-five percent of its contents and not miss a thing. Time to do some early spring cleaning!

The next time you are faced with temptation to add to your already growing collection, ask yourself if you really need the item. Take price out of the equation, regardless of how good a deal it might be. If it turns out you really do need the item, and it is available at a great price, take advantage of the sale with cash and enjoy.

This has been a post from The Simple Dollar. Please visit give it a visit for even more articles like this one.

The Two Okinawan Diet Rules (or How I’m Getting Leaner During the Holidays)

Like many people, I tend to overeat during the holidays, from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. It’s kinda part of the tradition to consume huge amounts of food, you know?

And like many others, I also tend to gain weight during the holidays — some people can gain 5 or more pounds (though for most it’s usually only a couple pounds).

Not this time around.

On Thanksgiving, while I enjoyed time with my family, and while everyone else pigged out, I ate moderately and wisely. And I felt great about it. I also got a great workout in the morning after — heavy deadlifts followed by two brutal 10-minute weight circuits and finished with 15 minutes of hard intervals.

This will be the healthiest holiday season ever for me. I’m also starting a meal plan and exercise routine that will have me drop some fat while gaining muscle by New Years, I promise. I’ll publish more about this plan after I see the results (3 pounds dropped already).

But the really cool thing I started on Thanksgiving comes from the Okinawan people (who don’t live too far away from my home, the beautiful island of Guam).

The Okinawan Diet Rules

The Okinawans (the indiginous people of the Ryukyu islands in Japan) are famous for having the longest life expectancy in the world. This single fact has had them studied from every angle, from diet to lifestyle to genetics to environment. And while all of these have played a factor, there’s no doubt that their traditional diet has played a big part — when they eat a more modern, Western-style diet, they don’t live as long or as healthy.

So what’s their secret? Actually, there are two secrets (and they’re not really secrets), and I used these rules to guide my eating on Thanksgiving (and beyond):

Rule 1. Eat to 80% full. The Okinawans call this rule “Hara Hachi Bu”, and if you haven’t tried it, you should. I did this on Thanksgiving — while I usually stuff myself with all the good food, I just ate until I was about 80% full. Of course, there’s no way to know exactly how full you are, but it’s a guideline. And as our brains are 10-20 minutes behind our stomachs, it usually turns out that when you think you’re 80% full, you’re actually full … while when we eat to 100% full, we are usually overstuffing ourselves.

The result of this rule for Okinawans is that they end up eating fewer calories than most people. They tend not to gain too much weight as a result, and coupled with their active lifestyles (they farm and garden and generally stay active, even into their 100s), it keeps them very healthy.

The result for the rest of us is that eating fewer calories will keep the extra pounds off. If we pair this with the next rule and an active lifestyle, we can actually lose weight during the holidays.

Rule 2: Eat healthy foods, mostly plants. Way before Michael Pollan wrote about his simple rules for eating healthy, the Okinawans had this down. They eat way more veggies than most people (mostly green and yellow ones), as well as whole grains, tofu, fish and other legumes. They eat very little sugar, and very little meat, dairy or eggs. This contradicts low-carb diets such as the Zone, Atkins, Paleo and others — I’m not saying those don’t work for whatever your goals are, but I am saying that a mostly plant-based diet has been proven to work well for the Okinawans.

I used these guidelines during Thanksgiving. I don’t eat meat or fish, so I stuck with veggies and sweet potatoes and a mango-ginger tofu dish I made. Again, I ate to about 80% full, and loved it. OK, I also had some pumpkin pie (made it myself) but as I ate mostly healthy and didn’t overeat, I felt great about it.

Can you follow these rules throughout the holidays, and the rest of your life as well? The Okinawans did it (although the younger generation has changed to a more Western lifestyle and has suffered for it) and I think I can too, most of the time. Treats are great in moderation, but moderation is the key word.

Get Active Too

I’m adding more exercise to these Okinawan diet rules (not to be confused with the commercial Okinawan diet, which I think is unnecessary if you follow these rules). The extra activity will help burn any extra calories I take in (which won’t be a huge amount) and I hope lean me out even more. My goal is to be in the best shape of my life by New Year’s — why wait until then to start?

The key is to just get active. Exercise regularly if you can, play sports, toss a ball around with your family. My nephews and I tossed a football around and worked up a sweat durng Thanksgiving lunch, and the next day during a day-after-Thanksgiving dinner with my dad I went swimming with the kids.

For those who are curious, I’ll list my current workout routine. I don’t expect anyone to follow it, especially if you’re not very active already.

• Mon: Running — intervals combined with steady state for 40-60 mins
• Tue: Heavy weights plus metabolic-conditioning strength circuits plus 15-mins of high-intensity cardio intervals
• Wed: Running — hill sprint repeats combined with steady state for 40-60 mins
• Thu: Heavy weights plus metabolic-conditioning strength circuits plus 15-mins of high-intensity cardio intervals
• Fri: Running — longer distance running (over an hour, sometimes two) including some intervals
• Sat: Heavy weights plus metabolic-conditioning strength circuits plus 15-mins of high-intensity cardio intervals
• Sun: rest (although I often play soccer with the kids or do yardwork or sometimes go hiking)

I try to mix some yardwork and other activities in there when I’m not too tired. Oh, and I’m doing a marathon in Honolulu on Dec. 14!

So what are your health and fitness goals this holiday season? Do you plan to just eat whatever you like, or are you getting leaner too?

This is a guest post from Leo Babauta, the author of the great site Zen Habits. If you have not already done so, please visit his insightful blog.