Frugality is No Longer a Virtue
Everyone Wants to Be a King
I’m frugal.
I’ve always been frugal, but as I age even more so. Still, I’m pretty sure that I’m not as frugal as humans need to be. I was born in America. One of the richest countries in the world. We’re not a frugal society. We waste, over consume, make a lot of trash, and damage natural resources.
Our motto should be …
Bigger is better
or
We’re spending our children’s inheritance
We share a disturbing past.
One that continues at warp speed to produce bigger and bigger and bigger consumer dreams and aspirations. We adore the rich even though we say we hate them. We talk about downsizing the American Dream, but our role models live so BIG that there’s no way the average American would pass up a royal life if given the chance.
Yet, we know that if everyone in the world lived the life of a king, we’d need several planets to provide the natural resources.
Even a middle-class lifestyle is too extravagantly wasteful for every man, woman, and child on this planet to experience. We need someone to make our stuff, mine our stuff, and distribute it to the other side of the world. That’s their role. Ours is to consume.
Yet, even as the world population increases along with consumer demands, we squander and damage our precious resources.
We can’t seem to help ourselves. We’ve made a little progress, fortunately. Finally more people are aware of our delicate ecosystems, natural resources, pollution, water scarcity, extinction, and clean air.
There once was a time that our rivers caught on fire.
Until 1969, my parents and grandparents’ generation didn’t bother to protect rivers. They were busy being the greatest generation and prospering from the best and most progressive times America has ever known.
I graduated from high school in 1969. I had no idea at the time that the Industrial Revolution had created so many dire situations.
I didn’t appreciate the laws passed to prohibit throwing trash out the windows of our American-made cars as we traveled down Route 66 without seatbelts, not a care in the world. My parent’s generation had already forgotten the Great Depression and the American Dust Bowl of the former generation.
But rivers were burning. Burning!
And trash was strewn along our highways, spoiling the view from the windows of our big cars. Our parents had survived World War II and the Korean War, but they had happily agreed to send my peers off to fight in Vietnam. For what? We never really knew. Surely, they weren’t sacrificing the young in undeclared wars that drug on for years just so they could come home to rivers on fire and dirty highways, polluted lakes and air. Or were they?
My grandparents were frugal.
They didn’t waste much of anything. They remembered pre plastic days and self-reliant lifestyles. They mended and repurposed things, gardened, almost never ate at a restaurant, canned food, and often did without rather than go in debt.
I inherited the frugal gene.
Yet, I fly more than my grandparents and there’s more plastic in my home than they ever dreamed of owning. I know. I know. The plastic world that I now live in was only just emerging with my parent’s generation. Mass production was really taking hold and factories were finally well established in cities across the United States.
Those changes were exciting.
Suddenly, we could make things cheaper and in larger quantities. Soon we could even throw stuff out just because we were tired of it. The new world held so much promise.
Everyone had a chance to be a king.
I’ve been practicing frugality for far too long to change my ways, however. I have a coat that is twenty years old. It’s my favorite coat. We only have one car. We bought it used and will drive it for as long as possible. I don’t waste food. Every scrap is accounted for and leftovers are eaten the next day or frozen and thawed out later. I rarely eat at restaurants.
Give me $100 and I’ll feed you for a week.
Still, I know it’s not enough. I fly more than my parents and grandparents did. I live in a time period when the average new home is twice the size of homes from the past. I see the trash barrels placed curbside and can’t help but think about the millions and millions of homes across the world sending weekly mounds of plastic packaging and junk to landfills.
I take pride in how little trash we produce, but we’re still contributing.
Frugality isn’t considered a virtue anymore. Frugality and the modern definition of a robust economy don’t go hand in hand. I’ll continue to hone my frugality skills, however. Even if it never becomes the new normal again, I’ve reaped the benefits. I’ve managed to save money because I refuse to be a big consumer.
I repurpose, recycle, reuse, and remember that I’m not a king. Frankly, I don’t think I want to be a king even if I could.
Kings and Queens were always too greedy for my taste. I’m waiting for a world that makes sense. A new generation that invests in the planet, redefines happiness, does away with planned obsolescence, builds things to last, produces far less trash, cleans up the mess their parent’s made, and improves life for everyone rather than just a few rich bastards.
We need new role models.
We need new ideals. We need to mean it when we say that a collection of STUFF never makes you happy, that you can’t take it with you when you die, and that bigger isn’t better after all.
Frugality was always a good idea. It still is.
Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
