Tightwad Nonsense

Dec. 4: Last Sunday, a popular local female columnist wrote about thriftiness. Her mother is sensible and frugal, the columnist wrote, because she catches the drippings of water from under the sink and uses them to water the garden. She re-uses paper bags. She runs around turning off any lights in the house and keeps the thermostat at 65 in the winter. How admirable. I’ve heard it all. But as a former counterculturalist who was all gung-ho about living the Thrifty Life to save the planet and the cash flow, I’ve concluded that the popular Tightwad movement of the last decade is a crock.
It’s an illusion that attracts middle class people mostly—the rich don’t need to worry, and the poor are already squeezing nickels till they scream---and gives the believers something even better than the money they imagine they’ll save, and that is a sense of control and self-restraint that feels as good and righteous turning down a piece of chocolate cake. With our country’s Puritanical heritage, strands of that old belief that excess is sinful and denial is godly remains in the culture even today. In a country of abundance, people indulge hugely with every “vice,” from eating and drinking to spending lots of money, and then are expected to feel remorseful, like an alcoholic the morning after a binge, and choose abstinence, whether it be from drinking or blowing money on luxuries. The Tightwad movement was popularized by that housewife Amy Dascyznski or whatever her name is, who used to go around the talk show circuit explaining how much money she saved by washing and re-using her aluminum foil, saving string, and shopping at Good Will. The idea sells well on Amazon. But come now, is it the high price of aluminum foil that hits people hard in the budget?
No, the real budget bruisers come from the areas in which people generally have little or no control: taxes, illnesses, car problems, job losses, moves, broken appliances, dental work, leaking roofs, and the like. All the money saved from recycled water drippings and the lower electrical bill would not even put a dent in the cost of the new valves for the car. People can and do work hard all their lives, live frugally, save money, pile up pennies like Silas Marner, even re-use aluminum foil, but then if the unexpected strikes, their savings could be wiped out. My sister, for instance, worries all the time. She has health insurance, but the deductible is $3,000 and it pays 80% of any medical problem. The cost of the remaining 20% of, say, a major surgery, would be off the chain.
If it makes people happy to do the little things to cut the electric or water bill, super; the saved money might be enough for a dinner for two at a nice restaurant. But these petty savings probably won’t protect a person from the big-ticket bills. I wish, therefore, that authors and gurus would stop smugly presenting the little thrift tips as the solution for a perfect and prosperous life. I also wish gullible people would stop buying into it, literally and figuratively.