Category Archives: Frugality

Fashion & Frugality

21 August 2010

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“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”
     ~Henry David Thoreau

I have a confession to make: I’ve never bought clothes at a thrift store.

I have browsed the selection to see what sorts of “treasures” I could find but came out empty-handed each time.  Even though I firmly believe in living a minimalist and simple lifestyle, I diverge from the frugality gurus when it comes to clothing and fashion.

The experts want us to believe that secondhand stores are the best option for fashion on a budget.  It is true that used clothes will cover our bodies just as well as a brand new pair of designer jeans, and for a lot less money, but should cost always be the only consideration?

“Who cares about the clothes I wear?  What matters is what’s on the inside.”

Philosophically, the content of our character is the only thing that matters.  Our clothes, the cars we drive or the house in which we live don’t define who we are as a person, yet in today’s society, appearances do matter.  How we dress influences our ability to attract a mate, find a great career or meet new people.  Ninety-three percent of how you are perceived during the first seven seconds of meeting a person is based on appearance.  Are you sending the right signals?

Clothes are more than just functional pieces of fabric meant to cover our jiggly bits.  They are an outward reflection of how we perceive ourselves on the inside.  Shy people wear plain clothes so they won’t stand out in a crowd.  People who are insecure about their weight wear clothes to hide the extra pounds.  Punks wear clothes that represent their frustration with the mainstream.  Our personal identity is directly expressed through the clothes we wear, so while our clothes may not define who we are as a person, we do communicate who we are through our style of dress.

And clothes aren’t just about style or creating an image.  Have you ever noticed how good you feel after a haircut?  Your confidence is lifted and you feel better about how you look.  Instead of feeling insecure or uncomfortable about your appearance, you feel sexy and strong.  Clothing has the same power.   A stylish outfit can boost your self-esteem and make you feel bold.  You may even find yourself asking out that cute girl you’ve been checking out for the last couple of weeks.

All this isn’t to say that we need a closet full of designer clothes.  Having a few key articles of quality clothing is far superior to owning a bunch of Stuff you don’t wear.  A wardrobe that you can mix and match to create different outfits is better than a different outfit for each occasion.  It is about getting the best value for your money, which means buying clothes that you will wear often and regularly.

Frugality is never about the money.  It is about finding the best value.  A carefully picked wardrobe can do wonders to improve your self-esteem and open doors to new opportunities in your career and love-life.  Money spent on quality clothing in timeless styles that will raise your self-esteem is money well-spent, at any price.

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The Life You’ve Always Wanted?

8 August 2010

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We all have our ideas of what the “perfect life” would be like but often the images in our mind are a far cry from the reality we are living.  If you were able to travel back in time and ask a younger version of yourself if this is the future they’d choose for themselves, what would their answer be?  Twenty years ago, could you have envisioned the life you have today?  Is it everything you’d imagined or have your dreams evaporated into thin air?

Chances are, the life you are living today is nothing like the life you expected to have.  You sold your ideals for a dollar bill.  Why?  “Because that’s just what adults do.” We have to make a living to pay the bills.  There’s food to buy and television to watch.  How are we supposed to save the world when we’re up to our eyeballs in debt?  The mortgage isn’t going to pay for itself, is it?

“It is what it is.” There’s no time for dreams.  Dreams don’t pay the bills or put food on the table.  Our younger selves didn’t understand what it meant to be adults.  We have obligations now and we’ve built our lives around some idea of what it means to be a “responsible adult” in today’s world.  What we ended up with is a career that steals our time and energy, a mortgage that drains our income and debt from all the Stuff we bought to furnish and decorate our home.  We have many thousands of dollars in Student Loans and a couple of cars to pay for.  Oh yeah, and the credit cards…

It looks like being an adult isn’t all that we’ve been led to believe.  All of our lives we’ve been told that adults are “responsible”, implying that it’s somehow more virtuous to fall in line and follow the leader than it is to follow our youthful ambitions.  The “responsible” thing to do is find a job, get married and have children, buy a house and a couple of cars, then keep your nose to the grindstone until it’s finally time to retire.  When that day does come, we hope that our health will last long enough to enjoy the life of our dreams; the life we’ve been waiting our whole life to live.

And what has it all amounted to?  A garage full of Stuff we never really needed in the first place, kids that seem to resent our very existence unless we’re buying them something, a spouse that we barely seem to know anymore and a huge house we aren’t able to enjoy because we are at the office earning a paycheck to pay the mortgage.

Sure, we have all the Stuff we could ever imagine.  We drive nice cars and wear nice clothes.  Our home is decorated like a magazine cover and on the weekends we are able to relax with a cold beer in the backyard.  On the surface things seem wonderful.  A little deeper though and things don’t look as good anymore.

What are we sacrificing to create this image of the “perfect” life?  Our time, our energy, our sanity?  If the average person starts working fresh out of college at the age of 22 and retires at 67, that’s 45 years of life sold for a dollar bill.  We’re trading our life to fill our garage with junk, for a heap of metal to take us to a job so that we can pay for that same heap of metal.

What if there were a different way?  What if you didn’t have to spend your entire life working?  Would you do it?  If you knew that in 10 years you could be financially able to walk away from your job with enough money to pay for all your expenses, would you have the ambition to make it happen?

There is a way, it is possible!  The only problem – of course there’s a problem – is that to get there, you have to minimize your spending and save.  “But that’s Un-American!” Our entire lives we’ve been told to “get out there and boost the economy.”  After the attacks on September 11 we were told to go shopping as a way to stand up against terrorism.  Does that mean we’re supporting terrorism by saving money?  Of course not!

What I’m talking about isn’t a new concept.  It isn’t impossible.  It’s been done before and it’ll be done again.  And not just by a few outliers but by many thousands of people.  Will you be one of them???

What’s the secret?

Live Frugally: Cut your expenses to the bone.  Anything that doesn’t offer real value to your life is out.  That might mean going without a contracted cell phone, cable television, TiVo or Netflix.  Find alternatives or other ways to occupy your time.  It may seem impossible now but you can live without these things.

Get Out of Debt: You can’t be financially independent when you’re in debt.  Get out, get out, get out! By adopting a frugal lifestyle, the extra money you’re able to save can be applied towards eliminating your debt.  After you’ve saved up enough money to cover six months of living expenses, every penny should be thrown at your debt.

Save: Once you’ve paid off the last of your debt it’s time to save like never before.  It may take you a few years, maybe even ten or 15, to save enough money to become financially independent but that’s better than 45 years!

Invest: This is where the magic is!  With the money you’ve saved, you can invest it into conservative investment vehicles which will pay you interest in fixed intervals over a specific length of time.  If you’ve saved and invested enough, this interest will cover all of your monthly expenses.  Now your money is working for you, not the other way around!

If you’d like to learn more about the process outlined above, I recommend checking out the book Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.

How Did We Get Here?

14 May 2009

4 Comments

"Thrift Shopping" by philbonnell @ FlickrIn my continuing exploration of thrift I oftentimes find myself wondering how we’ve gotten to where we are today.  As a nation, we used to place an emphasis on the virtues of hard work, thrift and frugality.  We took pride in our possessions.  Today we consume twice as much as we used to 50 years ago however our Gross National Happiness has continued to decline during that time period. 

It all begins at the end of World War II when a push towards television advertising changed the way advertisers campaigned for business.  By 1955 there were 30 million household with television sets.  Advertisers now had a captive audience which it could work to sell a generalized perception of consumption.  It worked to sell a higher standard of living.

What does all of this mean?  According to Victor Lebow’s 1955 article in the Journal of Retailing titled “Price Competition in 1955″:

The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats…”

 We’ve been sold this idea of success through years of intentional marketing.  For decades businesses have been working to create social pressure in order to get us to conform to the standards which they have defined in order to sell us their products.  We’ve been taught that in order to be accepted by society we must consume.  Each day we are the targets of 3,000 advertisements telling us to eat here, drive this car, wear these clothes.   

Marilyn Manson discusses how the media creates fear which in turn causes us to consume:

…You’re watching television, you’re watching the news; you’re being pumped full of fear…There’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder…Cut to commercial;  buy the Acura, buy the Colgate.  If you have bad breath, they’re not gonna talk to you.  If you got pimples, the girl’s not gonna fuck you.  It’s a campaign of fear and consumption.  And that’s what I think it’s all based on; [this] whole idea [of]: ‘Keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume.’”

For more than half a century we have been sold this story of conformity through consumption.  It is no surprise how our society today values material possessions far more than we did even 50 years ago.  Ironically, if there were to be a widespread conversion back to thrift and frugality, our economy would suffer.  This is called the Paradox of Thrift.  Our economy is set up on the basis that we will consume at a certain level, and if there is a shift towards frugality on a widespread scale, the economy will retract.  Sound familiar?  Its what is happening today.

The problem is that our spending rate is not sustainable and we must return to a more frugal way of life.  Of course, no one is going to tell you that you need to save your money.  As a matter of fact, most people will tell you to spend in order to boost the economy.  These people are not concerned with the long-term viability of our economy.  They are more concerned with boosting the numbers of the market today.

Now is a great time for us to return to the values of our grandparents; things like thrift, frugality and being thankful for what we have instead of concerning ourselves with what we don’t.