*************************
I learned frugality in my family of origin.
It helped that, being born in 1946 as my father was just embarking on becoming an academic economist, with graduate school still ahead, it was not until the mid-1950s that our family income reached levels then considered "middle class."
Although she, a high school drop out, eventually earned two masters degrees and became a high school teacher, she --like John D. Rockefeller who stashed potatoes around his mansion, out of fear of the return of famine-- never lost that sense of scarcity. Waste was completely alien to her ways. Likewise with extravagance.
And, being a fine teacher, she taught me well how to live within scarce means and how to get the most bang for the buck.
My father, too, had grown up poor, but not so poor as she, and he'd responded differently to the experience: he was careful and prudent, but spending was not against his grain.
As I identified most strongly with my father, I was fully capable of operating in the world with his careful, but less rigorous, management style. This capability was demonstrated when I first became self-supporting, a year after graduating from college: I was getting a decent paycheck in my work as an intern psychotherapist in a county's mental health system in California, and I had no difficulty in spending more than I saved of my discretionary income. Getting a good stereo system, for example, was my first priority.
But then, a few years later --when I had that visionary experience that led to the writing and (fourteen years after the vision) the publication of THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES-- I received my calling. Ever since then, except for a few minor departures, I've followed the path dictated by asking what is it that God, or Whatever, wants me to do.
And my putting following my calling ahead of making a living has necessitated cultivating the skills and disciplines of frugality as an adaptive strategy for survival.
***********************
I value rationality, and I try to be rational in my financial carefulness.
For example, I have a policy about coins I might come across as I walk through the world: I will not stop and bend to pick up a penny. For more valuable coins, I'll stop. (With bicycling, I regard a nickel as too trivial to warrant stopping. But then, at cycling speed, one cannot always distinguish between a nickel and a quarter.)
You might object that if I won't stoop for a penny, why do I exercise my thumbs for the last little bit in the toothpaste tube. It's a question I've asked myself. And the answer is: it's not all dollars and cents. Part of it is like a spiritual practice: I do not waste. I use things up before I dispose of them.
I still get satisfaction when I think of the end-of-life stage for my old butterscotch-colored '72 Datsun wagon. That vehicle served me very well for nine years. But in the life of every used car --and I've never bought a new car and likely never will-- there comes a time when one must decide whether it makes sense to put more into the ailing vehicle or to pull the plug. (Knowing when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em, is the most important financial judgment to make for the car owner.) When, in 1983, I decided that the time for heroic repairs had passed, I drove the car to the junk yard to cash in, and it was touch and go whether the car, on which several systems were by then quite iffy, would make it. The image I had of that Datsun at the end there was that it was like a lemon out of which every last drop of juice had been squeezed. Nothing was wasted, and this was for me a source of considerable satisfaction.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
