Frugality: Living or Merely Existing?

While reading an article about ways to survive the recession I noticed a comment which made me scratch my head and wonder.  The author of the comment stated that budgeting like you earn minimum wage isn’t living, but rather it is simply existing.

I used to have this same opinion about frugality.  I looked down my nose at people who weren’t dressed in the latest fashion or drove a car with rusted fenders.  My perception of these people was that they were poor, that they didn’t have a choice but to live in this way.

I never considered the possibility that someone would make the decision to live their lives in a way which wasn’t in pursuit of material possessions.  After all, isn’t it the American Dream to have as much Stuff as a person can accumulate in a lifetime?  Isn’t the reason we work so that we can buy new gadgets, new clothes, new cars? 

I wasn’t alone in my thinking.  It seemed that everyone shared my opinion about Stuff.  Consumerism is a way of life.  We are bombarded with advertisements constantly and there is always something new and better for us to buy.  It is no wonder our spending is out of control.

After reaching a point in my life when there wasn’t enough paycheck at the end of the week I began to question the status quo.  How was it possible that so many other people who were doing the same thing as I was seemed to be doing so well?  I battled with this question for a long time as I struggled to maintain a lifestyle where I could continue to buy Stuff.

I continued digging myself a hole which I wouldn’t soon be able to climb my way out from.  I felt as though I was drowning in debt.  Each day I dreaded opening the mail box or answering the telephone.  I grew up in a household which struggled with debt and even though I saw this on a daily basis, I didn’t accept it as being normal.  I turned to the Internet to figure out what I needed to do to turn my finances around.

I found myself reading all sorts of personal finance blogs and websites.  Eventually I came across a website called The Simple Dollar which introduced me to the idea of frugal living.  My opinion of these people was entirely wrong.  I quickly learned that they weren’t wearing the latest fashion not because they couldn’t afford to but because they didn’t want to.  They chose to use their money to provide stability and plan for their future instead of using that money to follow the herd.

I felt like I was trying to learn a foreign language.  Emergency Funds.  Debt Snowballs.  Mutual Funds.  Index Funds.  Dollar-cost averaging.  All of these things meant nothing to me, but I was intrigued.  My idea of what it meant to be rich was being challenged by people in patched blue jeans and who brown bagged their lunches.

I always thought that rich people lived in the big house on the hill with the red convertible in the driveway.  They wore nice clothes and went on exotic vacations.  Now I was being told that I was wrong.  I had worked hard to build the appearance of what I thought it meant to be rich.  I had the latest fashions, a nice car.  Everything I bought was the most expensive model.  I bought the best of everything because that was what the rich people did.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I may have done a great job of creating an image of a stereotyped version of rich but I didn’t have a dime in savings.  Didn’t rich people have money?  Maybe these people who saved their money were on to something.  I decided to do more research and learn as much as I could about this alien way of life.

I kept coming across a lot of the same information.  Spend less than you earn, save your money.  Then I found Dave Ramsey.  People everywhere were talking about his book, “The Total Money Makeover”.  As was my style at the time, I rushed out to buy it (instead of using the library) and I tore through the book, absorbing as much information as I could.  Reading that book changed my life.  It didn’t change my life because the information in the book was profound, but because I knew I needed a change and I wanted to make the change.  I was sick and tired of being broke!

After getting intense about changing my life things began to turn around for me.  I went from being in thousands of dollars in debt to completely eliminating my credit card debt and my personal loans.  I contacted my creditors and began to pay off my delinquent accounts.  Soon I was saving money, and now that I didn’t have all of the bills draining away my money it isn’t so hard to save.

Making this switch from rabid consumerism to balancing a frugal lifestyle with responsible spending has made me realize that I wasn’t really living when I was spending my money on consumer goods.  I was struggling to survive.  It was stressful trying to make it until the next payday without any cushion.  Trying to maintain the appearance of “rich” was causing me to go broke.  There wasn’t life in that.  It wasn’t living.

Today I feel more alive and in control of my life now that I have eliminated most of my consumer debt and have began saving money for the future.  Budgeting my life like I earn minimum wage allows me the freedom to live my life.  I don’t feel like I am merely existing.  That was how I felt when I was spending all of my money, not the other way around.