Yostivanich

An issue that is near and dear to my heart is the dis­cus­sion over being cheap or being fru­gal. This is brought on by all of these arti­cles on the sub­ject. To start with, what does the term cheap mean: of very low account or small cost, fru­gal on the other hand: eco­nom­i­cal in use or expen­di­ture. Note the key dif­fer­ence between the two cheap sim­ply is not expen­sive, while fru­gal reflects being care­ful with expen­di­tures. While being fru­gal could result in pur­chas­ing a cheap item, it does not nec­es­sar­ily mean every item pur­chased will be cheap.

A per­sonal exam­ple to illus­trate, I don’t really care about the fur­ni­ture in my apart­ment, so I have a couch that is ugly and not all that com­fort­able. How­ever it doesn’t mat­ter to me, I cov­ered it with a couch cover and called it good. Why, because the couch isn’t that impor­tant to me. Sure I could have got­ten a bet­ter couch, but it would have cost more (the couch I cur­rently have was free) and I know I wouldn’t receive any more plea­sure from a couch that was newer or bet­ter. The couch might be ugly, but my apart­ment isn’t exactly in the real estate sec­tion of the local paper any­ways and it is com­fort­able enough for the amount of time I use it. So why spend more money or resources on some­thing when the actual value that I receive doesn’t increase any real amount.

That being said there are also times in which spend­ing more money on some­thing does increase it’s value to me, so I do so. A per­fect exam­ple is cloth­ing, I could buy some­thing dirt cheap from Wal-Mart or some such place how­ever I choose to instead shop at mid-range stores. Why, because I don’t like how clothes from Wal-Mart feel and look on me. Buy­ing from such stores as The Buckle, Gap and Aero­postale gives myself more self con­fi­dence in how I look, the clothes feel bet­ter on me, and I receive com­pli­ments on how I look. All of these are worth the extra money that I wind up spend­ing on cloth­ing. That being said I am fru­gal in how I spend on clothes, for with my rather lim­ited income, I don’t have unlim­ited funds to spend. So I buy when cloth­ing is on sale, I get plenty of advice before hand on the col­ors and cut as to what looks best on me and what doesn’t. I also don’t shop at the most expen­sive store I can find but rather what can fit into my bud­get. But I still wind up spend­ing more than if I shopped exclu­sively at places that are cheaper.

Being fru­gal doesn’t mean hav­ing to give those things that you love and care it sim­ply means why spend money on some­thing that doesn’t mat­ter to you? If you don’t watch a ton of tv, why are you pay­ing for the expanded cable and mon­ster tv? How­ever if you love watch­ing tv and you do receive a def­i­nite increase in plea­sure or what­ever ben­e­fits from that huge tv, then buy it by all means.