Thrift, January 2009

Thrift is an attractive idea until you get down to specifics.

                                                               --Mason Cooley

If frugality were established in the state and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than the superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely greater happiness.

                                                               --Oliver Goldsmith

A penny saved is a penny earned.

                                                               --Benjamin Franklin

It is a great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.

                                                               --Lucretius (95-55 B.C.E.)

                                                                                    

I have long had the reputation of being a tad frugal.  Occasionally the words parsimonious, cheap, penny-pincher, stingy, thrifty, or even tightwad has been applied to me.  I admit to being careful, practical, and prudent.  One friend remarked that “Cook is so tight he squeaks.”   I take all of the jibes with good humor, secure in the knowledge that I am much sicker and more disturbed than any one person knows.

For example, when forced to dine out, I often eschew a tasty (read expensive) entrée I would really enjoy in favor of a more economical beet salad which I do not like, but is half the price.  I concede that a number of furniture pieces that grace our humble home have been acquired on trash eve, albeit from some very tasteful neighborhood curbs.  It is also true that much of my wardrobe comes from a certain open air establishment where the proprietor is given to shouting to his clientele, “Anything on the ground, one dollar!”

Our nation’s economy has deteriorated so badly that after decades of being chided and mocked, my cheapskate sisters and brethren are now being hailed for their thrift and are (gasp) being viewed as role models.  Granted this vindication has not come from splashy front page articles in The New York Times, or the cover of People.  But The American Interest, a real magazine (available free online) recently decried the death of thrift as a value.  Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, a professor at Rutgers University, states that for centuries Americans were an industrious, ambitious, and frugal nation.  She cites the thrifty Puritans, the words of founding father Ben (“Waste not want not”) Franklin, the rush to buy war bonds, and even the Frank Capra classic It’s A Wonderful Life, as examples of  our saving ethic.

Whitehead believes -- and she speaks for a think tank of sixty two leading economists -- that the social norms and values that encouraged frugality and sensible spending have been overwhelmed by easy credit and a false sense of entitlement.  Speaking bluntly, the chickens have come home to roost and there are not enough of them for every pot.  She is critical of the Federal government for heaping massive debt on succeeding generations.  The members of her think tank fear that we have forgotten the values of saving and of delayed gratification.  We see as antiquated the notion of living within our means.

The villains are the usual suspects: advertisers, creating a demand for the next new thing; manufacturers, producing for planned obsolescence; payday lenders offering fast cash at obscene interest rates; and credit card companies that target the young and vulnerable.  Whitehead also chastises state government run lotteries (“a tax on stupidity”) which yield $60 billion a year but reinforce the idea that something can be procured for nothing.

This gaggle of economists favors taxes on consumption rather than income.  They hope to raise public consciousness about the dangers of usurious interest rates from too available credit cards.  Credit card companies took in $937 billion in interest last year.  Debts like this contribute nothing to our economy and stymie useful spending.  Whitehead et al. advocate a full out public health campaign aimed at raising awareness of both the financial cost (bankruptcy) and the social costs (divorce, suicide) of abundant “free credit.” They suggest educating the public about credit and debt in much the same way that smoking and environmental issues have become part of our consciousness.

   

Maybe saving has become the new splurging and living within ones means is “in” again, but what has the recession done to us miserly types?  The hardcore still have their money in Mason jars and continue to save even more by avoiding dental visits for their toothaches.  I am not in the Silas Marner or Scrooge McDuck class of saver.  I am the ant or the tortoise, depending on the parable.  I buy day-old bread, go to garage sales and put my meager savings in “safe” investments.  Needless to say, I am now no better off than my grasshopper/hare neighbors.  I am glad that saving is back in vogue, but on reflection, I think I should have ordered the poached salmon in béarnaise sauce.

Tom H. Cook is a freelance writer and therefore practiced in the art of living on less.  He still remembers presenting his blue savings passbook to the teller at the local bank with his $12.00 of birthday money.