Brave New Kitty

It’s good to be frugal, but not if it’s a way to deprive yourself out of a sense of being undeserving. Here are some more thoughts about how look at money differently. They won’t solve any underlying emotional issues, which also need to be addressed, but sometimes, acting your way into right thinking is a good way to start solving a problem.

When I was a kid, I read a novel called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, about a poor family living in a lower class New York neighborhood. Once a week, the mother gave each of her children a cup of coffee, which was an expensive indulgence for them. One of the children didn’t even like coffee, but she gave it to him anyway because it made him happy. He would play with it for awhile, stirring it around in the cup, sipping at it, carrying it around the apartment, then eventually pouring it down the sink. Neighbors scolded her for being so wasteful, but she was adamant about continuing the practice. It was something both she and her children looked forward to, and poor as they were, she didn’t want to deprive them of this one small pleasure. To her, what they chose to do with the treat was unimportant; being able to give them something that felt extravagant was what mattered.

The point is that no matter what your income level is, it’s important to your sense of well-being to find ways to indulge yourself occasionally. The human spirit needs that; it can survive, but not thrive, on a diet of constant deprivation. Besides, constant deprivation will usually have an opposite effect: binge spending, accompanied by shame and remorse. This behavior is the exact opposite of kindness toward oneself. “I deserve it!” is absolutely true, but if the credit card bill is going to put you into a tailspin, maybe what you deserve is to find healthier ways to indulge yourself.

One way is to rethink some of your views about frugality. If your home is full of cheap items from thrift stores and garage sales, ask yourself this: Would I rather have a bunch of cheap stuff or a few quality pieces? Sometimes, there are great deals to be had at discount places, especially if you know what to look for. But more often than not, the items are as cheap as they cost, and you end up surrounding yourself with poor quality belongings that look cheap, feel cheap, and don’t make you feel good. What if, instead, you bought one or two high-quality pieces that made you feel good inside every time you looked at, touched, or wore them? Good workmanship isn’t a widely held value in our culture anymore, and that’s sad, because there is an innate beauty in well-made goods that somehow nurtures the spirit. Somehow, recognizing quality in objects is a reflection of recognizing quality in ourselves. For this reason, I strongly believe it’s better to have a few quality pieces than a bunch of junk, even if it means your living room or your closet will be sparse as you save up to buy the better items. Higher-end purchases may feel like an unnecessary indulgence, but it’s an indulgence based on self-care, one that will not only feel good every time you use an item, but also provide lasting value, and perhaps even an investment, that cheaper items cannot.

Another question to ask yourself is How valuable is my time? In an effort to save a few dollars, people will drive all over town, buying toilet paper at one store, milk at another, and cleaning products somewhere else to save a few dollars. Or they’ll spend hours poring through coupons and comparing prices. If your budget is so tight that this is essential to make ends meet, then it’s probably a good use of your time. But if not, then you may want to ask yourself if this is really something you want to be doing. Is the time it takes to be a savvy shopper detracting more from your life than it’s adding? Are there other things you’d rather be doing that you could afford to be doing? Are there other ways you could save the same amounts of money that would be more satisfying? For example, could you buy fewer packaged foods and enjoy dinner-making time? Or take the money out of your budget elsewhere–turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees, or walk to the store instead of drive, or simply forego certain items if their absence won’t affect your quality of life? Cable TV, for example, or having your nails done, or stopping for a mocha caramel latte on your way to work. There are dozens of ways to cut out pointless spending–and save you far more money than coupons as well–without giving up your valuable time.

My father wasn’t a very nurturing guy, but he did teach me a few good things, and one of them was to pay yourself first. No matter how poor you are, or how hard it is to make ends meet, you should always set aside some part of your paycheck for savings. Having money in the bank gives you options. It’s power, freedom and security. Regardless of the fact that few people save anymore, it’s one of the wisest, most loving things you can do for yourself financially. I realize it’s a lot to ask, but learning to save is absolutely essential to your sense of financial well-being. So unless you’ll starve or be homeless by doing it, getting into the habit of saving is a powerful way to create a healthier relationship with your money.

Hand in hand with savings goes using credit cards wisely. Have you ever calculated how much you really pay for something if you carry a monthly credit card balance? It’s horrifying, no matter how great the interest rate. So don’t use credit cards for frivolous purchases. Don’t buy groceries with them, and don’t buy things you can’t afford otherwise. Save them for traveling and emergencies. And if you do use them, do so with the intention of paying the balance in full every month whenever possible. There is no worse feeling than being over your head in debt, especially when you’ve been seduced by the easy allure of the plastic.

Finally, find some ways to indulge yourself that don’t involve spending a lot of money. It might sound corny, but buy yourself some flowers, or an occasional dessert, or take a bubble bath, or spend some time alone if that is a guilty luxury for you. There are so many ways to treat yourself lovingly it’s impossible to list them all. Besides, it’s a very personal choice, one that you get to make for yourself. The idea is to do things that feel good and won’t make you remorseful down the road. Like the mother in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you can find small but significant ways to add a sense of richness and luxury to your life without going into debt if you give it a just a little bit of thought.

All of these ideas should help you rethink how you look at money. But how do you go about addressing the underlying emotional issues that may be involved? It’s a complex issue, but a good start might be to see self-indulgence as a normal and necessary part of life, for which there is no reason to feel guilt. Self-indulgence has become a skewed concept in our culture, perhaps because our society identifies self-worth almost exclusively with achievement. Advertising slogans convey the message that self-indulgence is a naughty pleasure that must involve impulsive spending on irrational desires. This is completely untrue, and such thinking can get you into a lot of trouble. If instead you accept the occasional indulgence as a perfectly healthy act of self-love, it’s far more likely to remain inside the bounds of rational choice, one that feels good and nurtures the spirit. Because if it doesn’t do these things, it isn’t really self-indulgence, is it? Rather, it’s yet another ineffective way of trying to get your needs met that doesn’t feel good–or indulgent–at all!

If done in the right way–with self-awareness and without guilt–self-indulgence is necessary and healthy, and an act of self-love. It’s up to you to determine whether or not your frugality fits this description, and if not, what to do about it.

Being careful with money is a virtue. Shopping sales, buying in bulk, buying off-season, using coupons, comparing prices–all are wise practices. No matter what your income, frugality feels good. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to for anything. More importantly, being careful with money is a source of security. It creates a sense of well-being, and taking care of yourself this way is as important as any other way you learn to take care of yourself. Knowing you can spend wisely, and even put something aside for the future, brings about a kind of confidence that can’t be had by any other means. Frugality is a way to feel powerful and in control of your life.

But some people have a skewed image of frugality. If you struggle with self-esteem issues, or grew up in a family where you weren’t valued as much as you should have been, then you may have learned to use frugality as a way to deprive yourself. I call this the garage sale mentality.

People with the garage sale mentality have an uncomfortable relationship with money. They have frugality and self-deprivation confused, so their decisions about money tend to be extreme and irrational, rooted in the belief that they are undeserving of good things. But because they aren’t consciously aware that their views about money are the result of deeper emotional issues, they feel pride in their ability to live in scarcity, even if that scarcity might not be necessary. These people are usually women, as it tends to be women women who have the cultural role of running a household and who most strongly identify their self-image with frugality. When such identification is combined with low-self esteem or other self-worth issues, the garage sale mentality is often present.

Here are a few examples. I know many women who love garage sales (and yes, this was how I got the idea for the title). Their houses are cluttered with items that they beam with pride about because of the great deals they got. But the vast majority of these items are unnecessary, taking up physical and mental space for these women, while many of their real needs go unattended. I believe that such garage sale purchases literalize how undeserving these women feel, and how emotionally needy they are. They long to be filled up, but the only way they feel okay about doing so is with stuff they don’t really want or need. By doing so, they feel like they’re filling their emotional needs and creating a sense of economic security (I’m a wise shopper!), but sadly, they miss the mark on both counts, so neither need ever gets filled in a satisfying way. If the garage sale shopping is combined with impulsive overspending, as it often is, the result is a double whammy of shame and remorse that feels truly awful.

Another friend of mine loves clothes. But because of her self-image of frugality, she would never consider buying high-quality fabrics or name brands. For her, it’s quantity that’s important, so her closet is packed full of cheap clothes. Pilled acrylic sweaters and out-of-fashion prints, ill-fitting suits, vinyl shoes and purses that crease and crack after a few uses. She can afford good clothes, but it doesn’t occur to her that it might be better to have half the amount at ten times the quality, that she would look better, feel more confident, and be more comfortable if she could bring herself to buy better clothes. In this case, she takes care of her needs, but she does so with an unconscious sense of deprivation that she’s not only unaware of, but even smug about: she has admonished me more than once for spending “too much” on good clothes, although my clothes budget is a fraction of hers, and she knows it. I don’t know how she rationalizes this cognitive dissonance to herself, but it is no coincidence that this woman grew up in a horribly abusive family. Her attitude toward clothing is one of many ways she doesn’t take very good care of herself, yet believes she’s doing the exact opposite. (The most glaring example is her fundamental Christianity, which she thinks has cured her painful upbringing, but in truth has only re-created its shame and rigidity on a different level.)

Yet another woman I know takes her frugality to an extreme on every front. She has a six-figure income and lives in a big, expensive house, yet spends money on nothing. She has a beautiful kitchen and loves to cook, but she has low-quality cookware and knives which, if you are into cooking, you know are the two essentials for a cook to spend money on! She’s like this with everything: clothes, food, household purchases; hers is one of the few houses I’ve seen that is truly sparse–no books, no plants, few knick-knacks, entire rooms void of furnishings. It wouldn’t be so noticeable except that her husband is the opposite. He would never consider depriving himself of something he wanted. Maybe she’s compensating for him, or maybe she’s just taken her role as household organizer to the extreme in an effort to gain approval from a selfish and critical partner. Either way, it misses the mark, having the feel of deprivation all over it. And once again, there is a smugness about it that also feels off, as there is no reason for her to deprive herself of anything, much less express pride in doing so or derision for people who don’t (which she does often). Maybe in this case, frugality is a manifestation of how empty and unsatisfied she feels in her marriage (which I know to be the case), or perhaps with life in general.

I mean no disrespect to any of these women; after all, I am one of them, or at least have been in the past. I mentioned smugness a few times because I think it is an important element of the garage sale mentality. People who are simply frugal in ways that aren’t tied to deeper issues lack this smugness. They aren’t concerned with how other people choose to spend their money, or at least, their concern doesn’t have a strong emotional feel to it. So smugness or judgment about frugality is a good way to recognize the garage sale mentality, in other people and in yourself.

Other clues that you might have the garage sale mentality lie in how you relate to money in general. Does the prospect of having it intimidate you? Do you keep yourself in low-paying jobs, unable to imagine yourself earning more? Do you resent or look down on people who are financially successful? Do you worry about your economic well-being and secretly believe you aren’t capable of taking care of yourself on this front? Do you feel dread at making a budget, or obsess over it? Do you frequently experience buyer’s remorse, even over small items? Do you scrimp and save for months and then impulsively spend too much on something you don’t need? All are indications that you may be using money to deprive yourself because you feel undeserving of good things.

Money is a charged issue for most people, regardless what angle you approach it from, regardless how much or how little of it you have, regardless of sex, race, color, or creed. The garage sale mentality is just one of many, many issues people can have around money. It doesn’t make you bad or weird or different, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But if you’re in this camp, or even suspect you might be in this camp, then you may want to develop a relationship with money that feels better and doesn’t involve depriving yourself in unnecessary ways. Like everything else, money is a way we relate to the world, and having a comfortable relationship with it indicates a comfortable relationship with ourselves. It’s a window into self-awareness, and paying attention to it can result in surprising new ways to know, love, accept, forgive yourself.