Frugality

Abby Winger learned at least one thing during the more than a year she was out of work: how to live cheaply. After being laid off from a home loan processing position, the 37-year-old Chatsworth resident scrimped to stretch her unemployment checks and severance pay as far as she could. Now working in a temporary position, Winger points with pride to the time she used coupons and her store discount card to push a $99 grocery bill down to $65.

With stock portfolios in the toilet, layoffs looming everywhere and credit hard to come by, many folks are looking for places to cut back. That includes their own heads. Consumers are slashing their budgets by skipping visits to upscale hair salons and opting for inexpensive stylists. Some are getting haircuts less often or dyeing their own locks at home.

Consumers have done more than their fair share to keep the economy afloat for years. It's time to let others lift up the economy. Or, as ethicist Bruce Weinstein says: It's OK to be a tightwad. "It's not only OK in some circumstances; it would be wrong if we weren't," Weinstein said. "Because you shouldn't spend what you don't have." This is especially true during the holidays, a time when so many people go overboard and figure they'll deal with the consequences later.

HOW can a bank lose in a town like this? There's a beautiful lake nearby that attracts hordes of boaters in the summer, a bounty of inexpensive land and loads of frugal people -- whose forefathers were so cheap that for nearly a century the town has been known as Tightwad. The residents here -- all 63 of them -- take that name as a badge of honor. "I'm proud to be a Tightwadian," said Tom Skaggs, 72, the town's first mayor and a former member of the volunteer fire department.

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.

Twenty-one years ago, Charles Long, a Canadian civil servant, drew his last weekly paycheck. He wasn't fired. He suffered from "mid-career material frustration" and was answering the call of an unfinished novel and other plans for how he and his wife wanted to spend their lives. Today, Long has raised two children, built a home on 100 acres of land and has a life that, while not necessarily every person's dream, is in his opinion, comfortable.

I often ponder the phenomenology of spending habits when I'm stuck in the vehicular spin cycle known as the airport shuttle. There I am, squeegeed like a soggy piece of laundry between a window that won't open and the 500 pounds of fellow passenger, circling the airport for hours. But hey, I'm heroically saving $6 over taking a cab.

I often ponder the phenomenology of spending habits when I'm stuck in the vehicular spin cycle known as the airport shuttle. There I am, squeegeed like a soggy piece of laundry between a window that won't open and the 500 pounds of fellow passenger, circling the airport for hours. But hey, I'm heroically saving $6 over taking a cab. This nod to the piggy bank would no doubt make more sense if I weren't equally capable of confusing $6 with $600 at the sight of something spellbindingly essential .