frugal life

Frugality, Simplicity, and Sustainability

Philip Brewer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:00:03 +0000

The frugality blogosphere was buzzing last week with an article by Katherine Hibbert about how she was getting by in London spending just about nothing. People were arguing about whether her lifestyle was really frugal, simple, or sustainable.

You ought to read her article My free and easy life, which is excellent, but, very briefly, she gets by through a combination of living in vacant buildings (squatting) and dumpster diving (called "skipping" in the UK). The questions in the blogosphere, though, had to do with the extent to which her example can serve as a model for the rest of us.

(I should mention that the laws on squatting are different in the UK. The article goes into some detail on that topic.)

In all three spheres, the disconnect had to do with where you drew the line around the activity before deciding whether it was frugal, simple, or sustainable.

If you drew the line just around Katherine Hibbert, her lifestyle was obviously very frugal — she got by on less than £1 a day! It was simple, too — once she got past being stressed over knowing that she might be evicted at any time, her biggest problem was boredom, and she solved that by studying and doing volunteer work.

But if you drew the line a bit wider, the frugality and simplicity became a lot fuzzier. All over London people are maintaining vacant buildings; that's how she and her friends found places to squat. All over London people were pitching perfectly good stuff into dumpsters; that's how she and her friends found their food, their furnishings, and the stuff they sold to pay the bills that they needed cash for (such as her mobile phone contract). That's not simple and it's certainly not not frugal.

It's true that people were already doing that before she came along and made use of the buildings that were sitting idle and the stuff that was on its way to the landfill. In fact, part of her motivation is to draw attention to the fact that these resources are going to waste. (The results of her efforts are sometimes perverse, though — she points out that perfectly good food is being pitched into the dumpster and merchants respond by puncturing the containers so as to ruin the food, or by locking the dumpsters to keep people out.)

And here is where sustainability comes in. Some number of people can get by on the detritus of western consumer society. In fact, quite a few people. I have no doubt that the food, clothes, and consumer goods thrown away every month in the United States, if distributed among the very poor, could bring every American up to a decent standard of living. But that's only true because so many people are trying so very hard to live better than that.

If ordinary people decided to live the way I keep recommending — building a frugal lifestyle grounded in careful thought about what they really need — the cornucopia of surplus goods would dry up pretty quickly. Whether you call it dumpster diving or skipping, it doesn't scale.

Now, in one sense that's a theoretical point. I don't think we need to fear that millions of working-class and middle-class folks will suddenly abandon the rat race and decide to get by on what they can scavenge. But, I think it's more than a merely theoretical point, because there are a lot of pressures against the present model.

None of the people producing the excess stuff that ends up in the trash is doing so because they want to. In fact, they're all trying actively to waste less — and as they get better at reducing waste, the waste stream will tend to dry up. At the same time, social pressure to divert the waste stream to the truly needy will tend to dry it up as well, at least as far as people like Katherine Hibbert are concerned — the "surplus" food will end up at food banks instead of dumpsters. That's a good thing, but it'll be tough for people who used to get their food for free.

Of course, to the extent that people are choosing this lifestyle in order to make a point (rather than because they're lazy slackers), it's all to the good — it'll mean that their point has been heard. But to the extent that they've chosen this lifestyle because it appeals to them, I don't think it's got a long term future. It only works because cheap energy and cheap money have made us all temporarily rich; that's not going to last.

This article is from Philip Brewer of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Getting by without money in Spain

Philip Brewer — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:39:35 +0000

The money economy is one of the givens of modern life. For the ordinary person with bills to pay, getting by without money is almost inconceivable. Even someone who tries hard to escape the money economy is faced with taxes, utility bills, and the like. Personally, though, I find the lure of non-money economies seductive. That's why I've been very interested in this Spanish site whose name means "without money."

After I wrote my post Frugality Goes International on the Turkish frugality site tutumluol.com, I looked around for other foreign frugality sites. The next one I found was sindinero.org. It's different from Wise Bread. Although they are interested in frugality too, their key interest seems to be a bit beyond that--as implied by the name of their site.

I recently interviewed Juan Manuel Sánchez, one of two bloggers for the site, about their site's mission and any tips they might have that might apply outside Spain. Here's what he had to say.

1) The focus of your site seems to be on doing things with no money, rather than simply doing things with less money. Why is that important? Do you think an incremental approach is useful, or is "no money" an all-or-nothing proposition?

An incremental approach could be more useful, although it depends on individual needs. I mean... we have users who simply want to save some money (like families who need to adjust budgets), but there're also visitors very committed to the "no money" idea.

We're very focused on the "no money" philosophy, because we don't believe in capitalism (and making money is the main purpose in this system)...but we assume the reality we live in... and money rules people's lives. So... some of our proposals are thoughts on how to do things with less money, but we're not specialized in this area (moreover, there're many sites working in this way).

2) I've written in the past about economies that aren't based on money (gift economies, command economies, barter economies, etc.). Do any of these match the sort of economic system that you're interested in? Can you describe, or give a name to, the sort of economic system that matches your vision?

Barter economy, no doubt. In Spanish, we call it "trueque", and it matches perfectly the economic system we're interested in. But we think that it shouldn't be just an anti-crisis product... it should be more than it. "Making money" activity would disappear, and the world would be more concerned in human being's real needs. Anyway, "trueque" is becoming very popular...above all, in the internet... the number of "trueque" sites is growing and growing... very probably because of the crisis (I'm afraid it could be just a new fashion in the net... I hope to be wrong).

3)How do your ideas mesh with Spanish traditions? Does what you're trying to do amount to a return to old traditional values where you live, or is it something new?

To be honest, we haven't taken into account any Spanish traditional value...we live in big cities like Madrid and Barcelona (unfortunately, we've grown with McDonald's, Burger King, Hollywood movies, etc. etc.) and we haven't known these traditions. What we're trying to do is not really new... you could find many similar experiences throughout the world. But, maybe (at least in Spain), we're the first ones trying to organize and promote all these ideas in the net... in the way we do...

4) Where you are, which of life's needs are toughest to manage with no money? Housing? Food? Clothing?

Very easy to answer: housing. During the last years, Spain has suffered a terrible "real state" bubble. Prices have grown enormously, producing very bad consequences for young people. Moreover, in Spain, buying a property is an old tradition... so, imagine how frustrated are these persons willing to buy a house (but not able to afford the purchase). But there's a way to react to this problem (becoming more popular) : "okupación"...which means entering an empty building and transforming it into a social centre (and a place to live in... with no money).

5) How much does "do it yourself" figure into your ideas of getting by with no money?

How much? I'd say, a lot. "Do it yourself" helps a lot, although it requires having some skills that some people don't have. It requires a lot of discipline, as well... but you know... if you're not very skilled, you can call somebody able to help you, in exchange of something (another service or product). ¡¡Trueque again!!

6) Do you have a favorite idea or two from your blog that might have broad application internationally?

For travelers: Couchsurfing and Hospitalityclub. I think these social networks are being very successful... internationally.

For language learners: all these sites (social networks again) that contact people to exchange languages using skype and similar services. Thanks to all these websites, you don't need to travel to China to learn Chinese... just "bring" a Chinese speaker to your home and talk with him or her.

Thanks Juan!

Anybody else out there interested not just in living frugally, but in taking a shot at getting by without money? It's something I'm interested in.

This article is from Philip Brewer of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Finding joy in temporary frugality

Philip Brewer — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:50:06 +0000

If you read frugality and simplicity blogs for any length of time, you'll run into a lot of people who take great joy in having simplified their lives. Gradually simplifying your life is one obvious path for finding some of that joy for yourself. Let me suggest an alternative: temporary extreme frugality.

Lots of people become temporarily frugal out of necessity--because of a lost job or an unexpected expense. Others are temporarily frugal to achieve some goal--saving up to make a down payment on a house or car. I'm suggesting temporary frugality where the goals are less material and more experiential.

Think about where your comfort zone is: What fraction of the continuum from third-world poverty to celebrity billionaire can you see yourself happily occuping for the rest of your life? Now, pick a spot distinctly below the bottom end of your comfort zone and live there for a little while.

Think of it like a camping trip. To go hiking in the wilderness, people give up basic comforts like a stove, refrigerator, and running water, but they don't give them up for the rest of their lives. The temporary sacrifice is both a means to an end--they can go deeper and stay longer--and an end in itself--their actions express who they really are.

Some people lurch from being miserly to prodigal and back again. That comes from being confused about how you want to live. This is different. This is about knowing where you want to live and then choosing to experiment outside that range in order to learn something about yourself.

Gradualism can work great--it can be very satisfying--but the satisfaction is incremental. It takes a long time to see if the joy that some people find in extreme frugality is there for you, too. A brief tour in that place can be a short cut.

To make this work, you need to get extreme about something, but it could be a small thing or a big thing: Brown-bag your lunch for a week. Park your car for two weeks and walk, bicycle, or take the bus. Eat no dinners out for a month. Buy no new clothes for a season. Drop cable and don't turn it back on until the next "free installation" offer from the cable company. Move to a cheaper apartment for a year.

Like a camping trip, you come back home to your real life once your visit to frugality is over. And, like a camping trip, you can go again--to the same place or a different one--if you found the experience rewarding.

The money you save through a brief period of extreme frugality probably won't be enough to change your life. The experience, though, very well might, if you find the joy that many people find there.

This article is from Philip Brewer of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Book review: Retire on Less Than You Think

Philip Brewer — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:15:10 +0000

Halfway through Fred Brock's book Retire on Less Than You Think: The New York Times Guide to Planning Your Financial Future, I was mentally drafting a review that would call it good but kind of basic for most Wise Bread readers. Then it clued me in to an oddity of federal law that could make the difference between keeping or losing my health insurance. That one bit is not only worth the price of the book, it could easily be worth my entire life savings. Actually writing the review, I realized the book is full of bits like that. I happened to know most of them already, but I've been studying this stuff for years. I have to say this is a must-read book for anyone who hopes to retire before they're 65.

[Updated to add: A revised version of this book has come out since I wrote this review. Check out Retire on Less Than You Think, Revised Edition: The New York Times Guide to Planning Your Financial Future.]

Brock spends nearly a third of the book on one rather obvious idea: You can retire on less if you spend less money! This will, perhaps, not be a great revelation to the average Wise Bread reader. To be fair, though, the book is aimed at affluent New Yorkers (and affluent folks from other east and west coast cities) who would be shocked at the notion that they might live anywhere other than where they do. Perhaps it is important for those readers that he so patiently makes the case that you can spend less money without reducing your standard of living at all--and that you can spend a lot less money if you're willing to make only slightly more drastic changes in the way you live.

In fact, the best parts of this book are in this area, because Brock talks about actual people who have retired on less money than some people might consider possible. He covers a pretty wide range from barely frugal at all to pretty darned frugal (such as Elton Pasea who saves enough of his $1200 a month from social security and a pension to take annual bicycling vacations in Europe).

Brock goes to quite a bit of effort to debunk the notion that you'll need to be able to replace 70% or 80% of your pre-retirement income from savings or your pension in order to retire. Rather, you need to replace that fraction of your spending (which had better be less than your income, if you're hoping to retire early).

After making the case that early retirement is within the reach of almost anyone who lives on less than they earn, he gets into the good stuff. There's a chapter on simplifying your life that's good, if a bit basic. A chapter on deciding where to retire with some good resources for finding someplace affordable and some sound advice on choosing to live near family and with access to things you want to do. There's a section on analyzing your assets, with some good info about reverse mortgages for people who own a house. There's a chapter on health insurance that had that great tidbit for me. It rounds things out with a chapter on social security and then some worksheets, suggested resources, and an excellent index.

(The tidbit for me, by the way, had to do with the the federal law HIPAA. That's the law that prompted all of your doctors and pharmacies to start giving you privacy notices. It also assures that, if you change employers and go from one group plan straight to another, the new plan can't exclude coverage for preexisting conditions. (I knew that part.) It also (and this was news to me) requires insurers to offer coverage to anyone who has left a job, continued their coverage under COBRA, and then exhausted the COBRA coverage. I'm still covered under my employer's insurance as part of my severance package, but I hadn't been planning on exhausting the COBRA coverage--I'd been planning to use that only as a back-up in case I had trouble finding insurance. I didn't understand that by getting an individual policy earlier, I'd lose access to guaranteed, non-cancelable insurance! That one point is probably of interest to only a small number of people, but it's critically important to anyone leaving a job and not yet eligible for Medicare.)

Retire on Less Than You Think by Fred Brock. It's a short book--you could read it in an afternoon. But in addition to advocating for the idea that a simplier life lets you follow your bliss--to retirement or where ever else it might lead you--there are dozens of bits of information that could spell the difference between a happy retirement and having to go back to work in your old age.

This article is from Philip Brewer of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Frugality: a tactic, but also a goal

Philip Brewer — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:59:47 +0000

I was going to write a piece on how frugality was a tactic, not a goal. The point I wanted to make was that the goal is living the life you want to live, and that frugality is a tactic to help you reach that goal. As I've read more frugality blogs, though, I've realized that there's a diversity of opinion on this topic. For a lot of people, frugality is a goal in itself.

I understand part of it. For a lot of people, frugality is not just a way to live more gently on the planet--frugality is living more gently on the planet. Frugality is not just a way to align your spending with your values, frugality is aligning your spending with your values.

Having said that, though, I don't have a sense that I've completely grasped this point of view. I feel like I have a lot to say about frugality as a tactic--I've written some posts on the topic and will write more in the future. The idea of frugality as a goal, though, is still new to me.

If frugality is more than a tactic in your life, if frugality itself is a goal for you, I hope you'll write a bit in the comments. I'd like to hear about it.

This article is from Philip Brewer of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: