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To many frugal means cheap. Being cheap is often considered negative. And perhaps it can be a negative quality if it means selfishly hoarding money and being unwilling to share. But frugality in service of living simply, treading lightly, not overwhelming your life with stuff you neither want nor need and as a strategy to ensure that you can support yourself throughout your life seems to me to be a fantastically positive quality.
Not everyone agrees with me though as I've learned from several bloggers.
Money Dummy thinks PF bloggers are doing the world a disservice by using the term "delayed gratification" and suggests instead using "creative gratification." Otherwise, she asks...
Is it any wonder that we have to fight so hard to get our spouses, friends, and relatives to embrace our frugal philosophies?
But, she also realizes that her relentless focus on finances might be making her a boring person so she vows to give it a rest...
Yes, oh yes, folks. The true personal finance guru is deeply into his finances when he’s doing his finances. But once it’s over and he’s decided how to live, how to spend, what to save, and where to go, that’s it. He’s done with money, and he’s back into life.
And so, my friends, with that sentiment, I bid you a pleasant good night and go in to chat with my honey. And we will not be talking money.
Penny Nickel at Money and Values worries that she might be missing out on the present by focusing on the future...
I hear that suggestion a lot regarding how much money frugalites and penny-pinchers spend: that we're not enjoying life enough because we're not willing to spend much money.
She invites you to help her answer this question..."Do you struggle with tradeoffs between earning money and being happy and fulfilled?"
And the Miserly Mistress at Beyond Broke thinks she might have lost a friend due to her frugal ways...
I want to be fun, carefree and spontaneous. I want to be liked. But I'm also scared to death of not being financially secure. If she thinks I'm neurotic now, wait until she sees me with £7 to my name and over a week until payday. My diary prevents that.
How do we find that balance? How do we keep from turning friends and family off because we've made a choice not to spend as freely as most? How do we handle it when at the end of the day we are secure and our more profligate loved ones are not? Frugal, cheap, thrifty or a spontaneous, live-for-today free spending spirit - what's your style?
