Being frugal doesn't mean never spending any money. I do spend money, but I spend it consciously on things that matter the most to me and I try and find ways to get those things for as little money as possible. I've spent years adjusting my focus to spending money on - for the majority of the time - needs not wants.
In many respects I was already ahead of the game before I started this journey. I was different as a child because of the way I was brought up so I didn't value the same things my peers did as a teenager. I was brought up by parents who got what they wanted by buying secondhand, and if they couldn't they went without, and who valued careful frugal accumulation of assets, not debt. This was very different from my peers and their families so I stuck out like a sore thumb and became a target. I have a been a target for other's derision all of my life because I chose the path less travelled (good old Robert Frost!) but that has taught me mental toughness. Interestingly, I've never felt I should change to fit in - I could have done and maybe my life would have been easier - but something in me wouldn't allow me to change who I was for others. I think as a child I sensed that people who cared for me would not make me do something I didn't want to do, they wouldn't try and shame me or force me to do something that fitted their idea of me or made them feel less insecure about themselves.
I look around me and see people really suffering because they are incredibly bound up in the idea that their stuff defines who they are. The label on their wine or jeans, the type of car they drive, their brand of sunglasses, they are caught up in peer pressure and feel inadequate if they don't have things they think they need to have or face being seen as different and lose others' approval. They're great people but won't let anyone past 'the mask'.
One of my work colleagues recently 'needed' a £3,000 carbon fibre racing bike because without it he felt he wouldn't fit in with his other colleagues who biked together. Buying it left him so strapped for cash he couldn't afford to insure it separately, as requested by his home insurance company. It was stolen from his shed recently. The pain I saw on that man's face was very real and it wasn't just down to the feeling of violation that comes being the victim of a burglary. That bike, that object, defined who he thought he was and displayed to the world. Who was he without it? Someone he didn't like very much, I suspect, and felt others wouldn't either.
Anyway, years ago when I first started down this path I was searching for a way to help me distinguish between needs and wants as I struggled with frugality. I still had debt left over from six years at University - student loans and credit cards - and I wanted them gone because the payments were preventing me from being able to save a decent amount for a deposit on a house. I came across Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the course of my work at a marketing agency and realised I could use it to craft a personal policy rather than an arbitrary list that might fail if I came across something that wasn't on it.
According to Abraham Maslow's theory of human motivation there are six different levels of needs: physiological, security, social belonging, esteem, self-actualisation and self-transcendence. You start at the bottom and move up through the levels as you master each each one. I realised that the first two levels could be adapted to define a pathway and help me navigate my way to financial comfort, maybe even independence.
Starting at the first or bottom level, Maslow's physiological needs are:
- Breathing
- Water
- Food
- Sleep
- Clothing
- Shelter
If you think about it, even animals need these six things (obviously not clothing but they need a covering on their body to help keep them warm). They are common to all life.
In terms of frugality, I adapted them and placed them in order of what I considered important:
- Breathing - No smoking! I didn't smoke a lot (maybe five a day) but I was still spending money on a bad habit that could make me ill one day.
- Shelter - making sure I always had the rent or mortgage no matter what happened
- Water (utilities) - the most efficient use of all of the utilities for the best price
- Food - from scratch as far as possible, and in bulk to reduce costs
- Clothing - secondhand, and new stuff for Christmas and birthdays
Once I had those in place, I found that the majority of my daily decisions fell somewhere into those five. In time, I was able to turn to security needs:
- Personal
- Financial
- Emotional
- Health and wellbeing
Adapted and placed in order of importance to me:
- Financial (savings) - because without a money stash I would make poor decisions, and this would affect every one of the other needs below. I worked two jobs for years to lay down enough money to feel secure.
- Emotional/health and wellbeing - in the words of Les Brown "you have to get the losers out of your life". For me, that was people who made me feel bad, the doubters and the haters, which in turn affected my heath and wellbeing. It also meant getting out there and finding people who I connected with and who made me feel emotionally secure, who understood why I was embracing frugality and would embrace it with me (e.g. Martin!)
- Personal - for me, this was securing enough time and space to down tools and take as much time as i need to feel rested and recharged by reading and crafting. No interruptions. The doubters and the haters had a real problem with me doing this. They wanted to know where I was all the time, what I was doing, why I was not spending money, why I was not considering them and why I was not doing 'cool' stuff. Didn't I know I needed their approval? Some actually took personal offence. Once people like that had gone, life got much easier. You know someone shouldn't be in your life any more when your heart sinks when you hear from them.
I won't go into the other Maslow levels, as they don't necessarily have frugality at their heart, but you can read about them more here.
So, fast forward to today. We're still frugal - it's second nature now - and many things we do are on auto-pilot, which has freed us up to pursue other things. On Maslow's path I'm switching up and down between social belonging and esteem and moving towards self-actualisation. I have reached a point where I want to fill the gaps, the deficiencies, in myself and stretch and grow.
I'm joining new groups and cultivating new friendships, as well as planning travel to unusual and interesting places around the world. I'm reading more material that stretches me and helps me understand the world through others eyes. I'm going back and watching all those films and reading those books I bypassed because I knew they would make me feel uncomfortable. I wasn't ready for them. Now I am and I'm embracing the discomfort.
We've got the basics down and that is allowing us to do more and learn more about ourselves.
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