We’ve all heard about how money is one of the biggest reasons people cite for dissolved marriages. It’s no secret that most of us stress about money to some extent, and sometimes that stress wreaks havoc on our health and relationships.
I’ve been in the strange position this last year of money *not* being a big issue for the first time in my life! We’ve made more than double our regular income this year (thanks to my husband – don’t imagine that my little endeavors are doing us THAT much good!!), and I’ve tried to spend plenty of thought and prayer time on working out what exactly that means for us and our desire to live with integrity.
This post has been marinating for a long while – since before our income increase, actually. I felt very proud of my frugal ways and how they had helped make ends meet, but I also wondered if I was going to have to keep them up forever. So, I asked my Facebook community a while back what they thought about frugality. Is frugality a means? Or an end?
The answers were fairly divided, but slightly weighted toward the “end” crowd. Most people had the goal of financial stability in mind, but agreed that frugality is a lifestyle in and of itself.
I hope you’ll bear with a little bit of philosophizing as I run through my thoughts and how they have changed over time. And then, please comment with your own point of view!
Frugality as a Means
Some of us begin our frugal living journey in much the same way as we begin our healthy living journey. We get to a point in our lives where there’s some chaos in our financial department, or something changes that requires us to make drastic changes to preserve our health and sanity.
My story has a little element of that. My impetus for getting very serious about watching spending and saving money was definitely getting pregnant and making the decision that I would stay at home when baby was born. What great motivation, right? In that case, frugality was a means that allowed me to stay close to my new child on only one (meager) income.
However, I definitely grew up understanding financial need! To say that we pinched pennies would be a gross understatement. My mother was single for much of my childhood and worked hard to make the basic necessities available for me and my two sisters. I’m thankful that I learned early on the value of going without, buying second hand, and skipping the name brands. It made our adjustment to one income as an adult a mostly painless process.
Obviously though, frugality was not exactly optional in my childhood. It was a means to survival that became a lifestyle (and in a sense, an “end”) by virtue of habit.
My husband is a very practical man with a very different background. Money talks in his house centered around investments, and life insurance policies, and trust funds. These concepts were completely foreign to me! Remember that I knew how to survive, not how to plan. That resulted in plenty of misunderstanding early in our marriage. I saw our $30,000/year as a wonderful salary. He saw it as a frustrating barrier to ever being able to afford things like a nice home, or family vacation, or retirement and college savings.
And so, we saved. And we were frugal. And we had literally a zero dollar entertainment/clothing/datenight/gift budget.
He assured me that our strict savings was a means to a more comfortable future. (Anyone hearing Dave Ramsey’s “Live like no one else so you can later live like no one else.” mantra in their heads?) Honestly, I wondered if it was more an end for him than a means. Did he just worry so much about money that our salary would never be enough? We’d always be apologizing that we couldn’t afford Christmas presents with a fat wad of cash in the bank? I can’t tell you the number of times I lamented this as we ran the budget numbers. I didn’t want to have to always be frugal!!
Frugality as an End
As I mentioned before, I was totally on board with some aspects of being frugal – buying used items (nice to know things aren’t being wasted anyway!), purchasing generic or lower priced brands, etc. I also utilized coupons sometimes, purchased food in bulk, and learned to cook from scratch. There wasn’t really much in our life that couldn’t rival your favorite frugal living blogger’s life.
I got to choose between embracing frugality as an end, or suffering from discontentment and always begrudging frugality as a means.
I was also compelled to embracing the “frugal living” concept because I found myself pondering my role in our greater global community. If I had “extra,” shouldn’t it go to those who had none? Could I really justify “shopping for fun” when so many went without clean water and enough food?
Perhaps the answer to “Christian stewardship” lies in frugality as an end? A way of living regardless of whether or not we need to be frugal?
But where does this line of thinking stop? Is it therefore selfish of my husband to want to save for retirement? Should we never go on a vacation as a family? Or maybe just never stay in a nice hotel on vacation? Or visit anywhere that costs a lot of money to get to? If I can afford organic skin care and makeup, should I still stick to bar soap and drug store foundation? Or maybe wearing makeup goes against frugality as an end anyway? (I certainly didn’t have a makeup budget back in the day, and it was freeing to know that my husband didn’t care a jot that I was bare-faced, so I’m not knocking those who forgo that sort of thing!!)
Frugality is a Choice
The drastic jump we’ve made in income has certainly challenged the ideals we thought we held. Being frugal is now an exercise in restraint and an intentional choice rather than our modus operandi.
Has my husband relented at all? Yes, I’d say so! Now that he doesn’t have to worry about making ends meet, he doesn’t mind at all that I make purchases without asking, buy as much organic food as I can, and take the kids out for ice cream once in a while. It’s a non-issue.
I used to have to literally save change I found on the sidewalk to grab a cup of coffee someplace (and the fact that there was free coffee at church was uhMAZING)! Now I’m taking friends out for coffee and paying their tab!
We used to have one set of thread-bare sheets for our bed, and now we not only have two sets of sheets for each bed but we also have a cute little laundry hamper to toss them in when they are dirty!
I still wear t-shirts from middle school, but I’ve also been able to revamp my wardrobe to fit the climate here and be a bit more stylish than my norm.
I still cut my family’s hair, but I’ll be going in to officially “get my hair done” soon and it’s not going to be at Super Cuts!
Depending on where you are coming from, most of these things might still seem in the realm of “reasonable” if not competitively frugal. I agree, and I am very much enjoying the breathing room!
Ya know what I’m not enjoying though? Me! I can tell that I am very susceptible to the “want” monster! The more freedom I give myself to purchase little unplanned things here and there, the more I want to purchase! I’ll grab a book on Amazon just because it looks interesting when I already have a bookshelf of books waiting to be read. Or I’ll get a cup of coffee on the way home from the grocery store even though I have a coffee maker just 5 minutes away that will cost me 1/4 the price I just paid.
Like most everything in life lately, it’s been humbling to realize that I don’t have any special edge on others when it comes to making financial decisions. When I’m not forced to save, I’m happy to spend! And little things add up very quickly! I’ve been frustrated with myself lately, so this is the perfect time to re-evaluate what I really think about money.
A Means AND an End
So, is frugality a means or an end? Both, I think.
Spending and saving wisely are essential for the long-term health of my family and my community. If we plan well now, we will be more prepared when hard times come. Frugality is a means to becoming financially stable and saving enough money to meet our giving goals.
Also, over-consumption and greed are all but overlooked in our culture and that is an evil we all need to fight – beginning with ourselves. So while I may decide that it’s important to me that my family uses natural skin care products, it may not make sense for me to own one of every eye shadow color I can purchase. It might also make sense to go without makeup most days. Or go without coffee, cable tv, new shoes, etc. Frugality as an end can be a wise way to live even if it looks a bit different for every family.
As our family learns to navigate the blessing and responsibility of a higher income, we are taking both of these perspectives into consideration. If I had to describe what I want my life to look like now that frugality is a choice, I think I’d say that rather than just living frugally, I want to live simply and generously. Those two will certainly keep me just as busy as living frugally did!
What do you think? Is it important to be as frugal as possible?
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