Frugal Is As Frugal Does

Frugal Zeitgeist is written by a 40-year-old West Coast transplant to New York. She paid off a $200,000 mortgage in a little over six and a half years, and is now working to build long-term wealth.

She recently wrote about how frugality can go too far. For her, making her own yogurt to save money is going too far.

I don’t think of frugality as wringing the last possible financial gain out of a penny, especially if it means doing so at other people’s expense (like not putting enough into the shared dinner bill, or being a lousy tipper). To me, that’s not frugality; that’s just being cheap. I don’t do that, and I hope you don’t either. Instead, I think of frugality as having two underlying philosophies: 1.) Spending less than one earns, and 2.) Spending in accordance with one’s values.

Frugal Z did an interview with Living Almost Large where she gives her three most important personal finance tips.

• Don’t give up what you want most for what you want right now
• Take the time to understand your values and direct your spending accordingly
• Always have a backup plan

Sound advice, although I’m not entirely sure about spending according to one’s values. To do that, I’d need to make sure my clothes were not made in a sweat shop. I would eat only grass-fed free range beef. My power would come from the sun or wind. My car would run on biofuels. And so on. As you can see my own values are tied to rather costly choices, which means I need to reduce overall consumption in order to afford the quality products I believe in.

I can live with that.