Once you practice frugal living for a while, you may develop a little inner voice that will help support your frugal goals and practical saving. Much as a little inner conscious that helps direct decisions, I call this your inner frugal.
You can help develop your inner frugal when you arm yourself with a good understanding of your financial reality and the things that you need and want in life. Then you won’t waste time and money on things that won’t contribute to those goals or make you happy.
The New York Times recently had a very interesting article about why spendthrifts spend and whether or not changing food prices to higher amount will actually entice people to choose those items because of perceived value.
But the part of the piece that I am really interested in is a mention of a survey by Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Miller has a blog, and he asked readers to first list the ten most expensive things that they purchased and then to list the ten things they purchased that gave them the most happiness. Somethings make both lists, but most do not.
I think this, then, is the key. Have your inner frugal compare lists.
How many times do we purchase things that don’t leave us satisfied? Eating out as a family is a big one for me. No matter how many times we do it, I just don’t usually feel that it was an experience worth paying for. I have no goal in life that would move forward when we eat out as a family.
How much happiness will get you per dollar? This is the idea of things practically paying for themselves. Another example in my life is the recent purchase of a fire pit. We got a great deal for a fire pit this month and have already used it often. It has provided plenty of fun family time close to home, and we could even cook on it in the case of a power outage or for fun, so this purchase would pass muster with my inner frugal.
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