A couple of marketing professors set out to define frugality. It seems that thrift is so alien a concept to the average merchandiser that the authors had to make it sound profound for it to sound real.
"Frugality is a unidimensional consumer lifestyle trait characterized by the degree to which consumers are both restrained in acquiring and in resourcefully using economic goods and services to achieve longer-term goals," wrote John L. Lastovicka and Lance A. Bettencourt in a recent Journal of Consumer Research.
In other words, as your grandmother might say, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."
But your grandmother probably cared more about frugality, and knew better what it was, than anyone you know now. In fact, Lastovicka and Bettencourt found that only 10% to 15% of the population is frugal.
"We're living in the lap of materialism," says Lastovicka. "What makes a lot of our current culture go is buying and investing. . . . If you go back in our country's history, frugality was dominant. And now it isn't."
The authors did not differentiate among the genetically frugal, the ecologically frugal and the unwillingly frugal. Nor did they distinguish between being frugal--a tarnished but still unassailable virtue--and being cheap, which is not admired by anyone but Scrooge McDuck.
In this season of excessive nonfrugality, it behooves us to take this subject as seriously as Lastovicka and Bettencourt have, but expand the canvas.
Let's take a common situation between a frugal and a cheap spouse. The frugal spouse doesn't fill the gas tank of the family car until it's empty--a more efficient use of time, she thinks. But then she finds herself with the gas gauge at totally empty, with her sweetie at the wheel. He sees a gas station. "$1.31 a gallon!" he says. "But . . ." she says. Then he ignores $1.29, and $1.28. Finally, just when she's about to have a nervous breakdown, he spies $1.27 and slides into the bay, satisfied.
This is a cheap person, because he's willing to risk life and limb for less than 50 cents.
Could It Be Genetic?
Some people think they're frugal until they meet the real pros. "I am convinced it's a gene," says Bette Land of Tenleytown, Md., who buys everything on sale. Her eco-frugal son, Andrew, 24, lives with her to save money so he can see the world.
But Land can be quickly outgunned. "Do you reuse your Ziploc plastic bags by washing them?" she is asked.
