Frugality - the ultimate minimalist virtue

The basis of a minimalist approach to life is embracing what we already have and trying to live a simple yet joyful life. Frugality is a necessity towards financial independence and retire early in short FiRe but equally important in the daily life of a minimalist, but what is frugality exactly? The best definition I read was careful management of material resources and money.

Nowadays frugality has got somewhat negative connotation attached to it partly due to the increase in consumerism in western culture and the social media pressure on young individuals in the showing off culture. Keeping up with the Joneses aka peer pressure is not just an often used meaningless concept adopted from the United States but a real phenomenon where the individual feel a peer pressure to keep up a perceived lifestyle due to expectations from others such as the imaginary neighbours of the Joneses.

It is time to embrace a bit frugality and familiarize ourselves with being content with what we have and be proud of not wasting resources. Ultimately time is money so whenever we spend unnecessary we are trading our time for stuff. I read an interesting comparison a while back can’t reckon the exact source right now, but the concept was simple, whenever you want to buy something think about the time you spent working to afford it, it is the price/hourly salary so let’s call it freedom ratio so if the new gadget costs £1000 and our hourly salary £13.00 than the calculations would look like this 1000/13=76.92 so to put it simple we spend roughly 77 hours working for that piece of gadget, we gave up 77 hours of our life to enjoy that gadget, the question than should be asked, does it worth it? If the answer is yes, than don’t held it back and enjoy it, however if it doesn’t worth 77 hours of your hard labour than just give up on the idea or even better find a way to make more money in less time and ultimately find a way to make money while you’re asleep or the ultimate option if it still doesn’t worth to chase this gadget just give up on this, people managed to live without it and you will be just fine too.

In finance there’s a similar concept called time value of money which referrers to the value of the money you have today is worth more than the identical sum in the future due to the potential earning capacity. To put it simple, the money you don’t spend you can keep it and invest it, so £1000 you have today is worth more than £1000 3 months later as that sum can be invested for the time being and can earn interest.

Frugality is not something negative instead a very positive way to carefully manage our resources and be as efficient as possible without turning it into deprivation of course. Our wealth just as our life is multidimensional, time wealth, monetary wealth, health wealth, social relationship wealth are all equally important.

Penny pinching and being frugal are two totally different concept, penny pinching is a phrase reflecting to the unwillingness of spending money meanwhile frugality is the concept of carefully managing our material resources, so don’t confuse the two.

I personally would consider myself frugal but never penny pinching, I do enjoy nice things in life, yes even nice objects, furniture, gadgets and quality clothes that tend to be pricy but like with most things in life the focus should be on balance.

Embrace a frugality and mindfulness, because the less is more.

Your sincerely

To/Minimal