Dieting and frugality are a lot alike. After all, when we diet, we eat less and when we live frugally, we live with less. With both, we abstain, we hold back, we do without, we make do. So they are alike, two peas, yes, in that pod called life. Right? Wrong?

A dear friend of mine is from England, now living in the U.S.  She sat in my living room recently, telling me that one of the hardest things to get used to in America has been the way that people spend so much time in their cars.  In England, she told me, life was centered around smaller villages.  Mothers walked their children to school, because they lived close enough.  They walked to the market, and to church.  And it would be nearly unheard of to drive for 15 minutes to go shopping.