Am I privileged for saying that being frugal means buying quality things?
This was an accusation thrown at me a couple of days ago and I haven’t been able to shake it, so it needs to be analyzed to death and then let go. Maybe you’ll learn something about frugality and privilege.
I couldn’t answer the person who said this to me because there was way too much to say that wouldn’t fit in a stupid facebook conversation. I also got angry at the assumptions behind it and didn’t have the energy to combat everything wrong with that reply by following my principles.
So let’s unpack this and see where it comes from and why, in my opinion, saying that “buying quality things that last longer, or choosing to spend money on experiences, rather than things, is privileged, not frugal” is wrong and ignores the very meaning of the word “frugal”.
First of all, the discussion started from an ADHD meme that someone shared in an ND group I’m part of. The point of it was that you should pay the “ADHD tax” (terminology with which I disagree, but oh well) beforehand.
So instead of feeling guilty about wasting carrots that rot in your fridge because you’re not able to peel them (ahem, my fridge agrees), they say you should buy peeled carrots that you just pop into your mouth, which are more expensive and come with a lot of packaging that doesn’t get recycled (there’s a high chance that the bag the other carrots come in also doesn’t get recycled…), but at least you’ll eat them, as opposed to throwing out rotten carrots.
Or other similar examples, where you pay a bit more upfront, but at least you get to enjoy the *thing*, as opposed to feeling guilty about not performing the extra steps needed to enjoy the other *thing*, which is somewhat “cheaper” (at least in monetary terms).
I totally agree with this! So I said that the best system for you is the one that works best for your own circumstances at the current point in time.
There was an adage there, in the meme, that the person had been raised frugally and they need to work against their learned habits of spending as little as possible.
I commented that I fully agree with the observations, except that living frugally has nothing to do with spending as little as possible, but rather with managing one’s finances wisely and taking the best financial decisions, given the available resources (most of my fellow non-consumer advocates would totally agree, by the way).
Then someone threw a dictionary link at me for “frugal” (and incidentally I only saw the American definitions, oops), where there is also a mention of the word “cheap” in one of the UK definitions. I’ll let you explore the various dictionary definitions here.
By the way, in our own language, frugal only refers to food and it means “simple and in small quantity” or “person who eats simply and in small quantities”, so it’s more related to poverty, than control of personal finances. I will continue discussing the English meaning because that’s the meaning I’m more familiar with in my life.
So I naturally answered that “frugal” does not equal “cheap” (because there wouldn’t be a separate word for a completely identical idea and all synonyms have various meanings, but these two are not even synonyms, they are only related).
I know that people without shelter or who live salary to salary don’t often have the option to buy the highest quality item for their needs, which I also mentioned. That doesn’t mean they can’t live frugally, based on my definition, by making the most of the little resources they do have.
Then I was called privileged for saying that 🙃
Now you know the whole backstory of the accusation. Let’s explore my privilege.
I do believe I have white privilege because I was born in a country where light skin is predominant (although not as light as mine, so I was made fun of during childhood because I’m so pale and burn easily and can’t get a tan) and if I visit any country in Europe I am not discriminated against based on the color of my skin, which is not valid for many of my fellow citizens.
I am aware of it and never used it consciously to advance myself in front of anyone, but I probably enjoyed some benefits while moving to Germany, for example, because people didn’t automatically assume I was foreign, like they do for some of the students at the local university (who actually speak German well, as opposed to me!).
That’s it. That’s the extent of my privilege that I am aware of. I’m also female/in a female body (whatever you want to call that, as I never identified as feminine or womanly), autistic (the privilege of being autistic in an ableist world just hurts — literally), come from a poor/nearly middle-class family (my parents bought a car when I was 14 or so, which is still very much in use mostly for family trips to see the rest of the family).
Maybe I can add to my privilege the fact that I was born in a country where education is free for nearly everyone (unless you go to a private school/university) and where I could attend university for free and receive some very low amount scholarships, but these were financed by my parents’ taxes that they paid during their four decades of working (they always worked hard and paid taxes, all the taxes, they didn’t get time off, they can’t even take all of their vacation days they are legally allowed to in a year).
My parents also supported me during university and helped me pay for my board (in university dormitories, where I shared a room with 3–4 people) and food (I sometimes had a meal in the cafeteria, yay, but mostly cooked for myself from scratch), but I had to ration everything and make sure I could live for a month from the equivalent of 100 euros.
For a month in university I had to live off of the equivalent of 50 cents per day because I had had unforeseen expenses at the beginning of the university year and I didn’t ask anyone for extra money (I never told my parents, they would have probably tried to send me more money, but I made do). Suffice to say that it was not a pleasant month.
This was all they could spare and I was grateful for it and made it work. For five years I lived off of this monthly sum, attending almost all my courses, volunteering in my free time, starting my own little business, winning scholarships.
The scholarships weren’t much, but in year 3 I bought myself a Kindle so I could read when I wanted and where I wanted, and in year 4 I managed to set aside a little money to buy myself an actual laptop, so I could study and do my work from something larger than a 10" screen (the tiny laptop I had also bought from money set aside from scholarships towards the end of the first year).
By only spending the little money I did have on essentials (cooking ingredients; cleaning supplies like detergents; essential self-care items that were not fancy, nor expensive, but not the crappiest, either; second-hand clothes and shoes), I lived decently.
I didn’t live a life of luxury, I still don’t, even though I now have much more income than I used to back then (yes, I did start earning my own money during university, but not much). I use and follow the same principles as then.
Only buy what is needed and replace what gets used up.
No new clothes, as my wardrobe has been quite diverse since my second-hand shopping days (when I’d mostly just look around and only buy the things that screamed “I need to live with you” and those only if they were truly affordable — most of the times I’d pay the equivalent of 25 or 50 cents per item— expensive, I know). I get a few new pieces of underwear and socks once in a few years.
No “luxury” items. No “brand” items. No useless electronics.
I still use my Kindle, although the screen on the first one broke, so I got a new one with touchscreen a few years ago. I have a phone that’s a few years old. I hope it lasts a few more years if I change the battery. It wasn’t the cheapest, but it was the highest performing in its price range (below 200 euros). And it’s still going strong.
My laptop still works without a battery (which just died a year ago) and it’s seven years old. I searched for over a month for the best laptop for my budget (about 500 euros at the time) and it’s still a good laptop. Sure, I now have a desktop computer that my hubby got for me second-hand (below 500 euros), but that’s because I needed something more powerful for faster video editing for my little business.
I have two cameras, a digital one I bought new about 8 years ago and that I now use for filming, and one DSLR camera that I bought second-hand 6 years ago that I use for photos for my patterns.
I do have lots of yarn, but that just happened naturally as I started writing patterns. I need it for my business. But this year I decided that I’ll be transitioning towards more sustainable and eco-friendly yarn (no more synthetics, yeah) and I am going to use my stash for new designs and not buy any more yarn for the year, since I already have lots of wool that I’d like to use up (plus, I want to get to it before the moths do).
Besides rent, utilities, car insurance, and food (which I try to keep pretty varied and full of veggies and fresh fruits), we have no other running costs. The car is something I didn’t really want, nor need, but it has been a great help over the past few years, what with moving country, but it’s not something we use every day, so I could very well live without it.
We sometimes (twice a year) spend a little to go on trips, but we take the cheaper accommodation (not *the cheapest*, but close), sometimes we choose the one without breakfast because we don’t do breakfast anyway, we travel by the cheapest means (train, car, rarely plane on low-cost airlines) and relatively close (the furthest I’ve ever been is Turkey, Scotland, Finland and Italy, most of these for work — I so wish to visit Australia and New Zealand, but they will have to wait).
That is what it means to live frugally. You don’t need to buy the cheapest thing. You need to create an environment in which you don’t need to buy things, but rather spend the money on what you really need, as opposed to what you think you might one day need.
This also means that since moving to Germany I’ve been able to put almost a full salary aside, each month that I worked full time, since we could live decently on one salary. It’s not enough to buy a house, but it’s a beginning that I’m working on adding to.
No, we don’t have pets or kids, but those are choices we make. Nobody chooses for us. If we had to take care of another person, we would make do and still manage to live within our means.
Living frugally doesn’t mean denying yourself the things that make life fun. It’s realizing that some of those things are not actual *things* that you buy, but experiences, times you spend with friends and family in places where you don’t necessarily have to spend money.
Cooking together, fixing a thing together and learning from each-other, taking a trip through the local forest or visiting a local geological landmark, biking, taking a walk through town, a visit to an exhibit opening (many are free), a picnic in the park, or just taking a book and sitting on the grass under a tree, these are all free or close to free of the burden of money.
As for the ones you do have to buy, getting something that will last you many years will free up mental space after you spend the mental and physical energy to find the specific thing that fits within your budget.
Being able to appreciate what you already have is a process that you need to teach yourself if your parents or school haven’t. While in school everyone liked to brag what new “cool” thing they or their parents bought, as an adult you have the choice of drowning out those childhood voices (that only begged for attention, really) with appreciative voices.
Look around you. What do you already own that makes your life easy and simple? What makes your heart sing?
Is it gadgets or fast-fashion clothes that you recently bought, or things made by other people you can actually name? A photo of a beautiful memory? A drawing made by someone you know? A shawl someone crocheted thinking of you?
Knowing and learning how to fix things also comes into living frugally. Not wasting resources also comes into it.
I was always taught to not waste, to make use of things and to come up with creative uses for things that had “expired” in their original intended purpose (not food, though, “expired” food doesn’t exist — it either went bad/got moldy and you shouldn’t eat it, or it’s still edible — sometimes you can take off the “bad” mold if it’s just on the surface of certain foods, but sometimes you also eat mold by design, so this is a very complex issue).
My dad has a little cupboard on the balcony, where he keeps his many tools and bits and bobs, nails and screws, wires and bobbins. That cupboard always fascinated me and I’d be found at random times in my childhood rummaging through there, searching for something to fix something else.
I have something similar now in my home, a wall with tools stuck to magnets, a little support for my thread spools (which I built myself from bits of wood and nails), a cabinet full of assorted tools and nails and screws, all for fixing things around the house.
When I left for university, my dad gave me a hammer, a pair of pliers, a file and a few other tools, as he knew I’d use them. I’ve bought some others since, but they were cheap and didn’t last. So now I only buy quality tools (which cost a bit more) if I really need them and only when nothing else will do the job.
I still have and appreciate them, the gift from my father when I was about to leave home to live on my own for the first time. It is one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received and one that has stuck with me because it means that my father really understands the person he helped grow and shape into an independent person who can shape their own environment. Even if he forgets so many other things.
Having the tools is useless if you don’t have the skills to use them. Thankfully, we now have the internet, besides friends, relatives and neighbors. So if you can’t ask someone else to teach you how to do something (as opposed to paying them to do it, which also works), you can also learn from the amazing resources that are freely available on the internet.
All you need to do is want to learn and you’ll find countless resources put forth by people just like me, who create things, solve problems, or fix things because they believe that’s the way you can enjoy your life and not drown in stuff.
Now that I think about it, yes, I am privileged, I learned all of this at a young age, from my parents and grandparents, who grew up and learned to exist honestly, the only way they know how, in one of the worst communist regimes ever (think North Korea, but without technology).
I learned from them how to truly live frugally (as opposed to just counting pennies and buying things that are cheap, but look impressive to others), how to take care of myself and mine with as little money and other resources that I have access to at any time.
I learned how to use things from nature, how to grow plants, how to identify mushrooms, how to take care of animals, how to build and fix things, how to find solutions to seemingly impossible problems, how to not give a crap about what others think of my outfit, or the way I speak, or about my original ideas.
I’m so proud of what my parents and grandparents did, despite their faults, as we are all human (I well know I have mine). And if it’s one thing that I am truly proud of them for, it is that, despite the world turning more and more consumerist, they have not gone consumerist with it.
I hope to one day also make them proud (if I haven’t already, no idea, I think they are still waiting for babies, which is not going to happen).
If that means I’m privileged, so be it. I can’t help my past. I can help my future and I hope that I’ll be able to talk more about non-consumerism and appreciation of life beyond *things* in the future. And maybe help some people realize that they can be frugal without sacrificing fun and beauty in their lives.
Maybe then I can pass some of this privilege onto you…
