Frugality Is A Day-To-Day Battle
Filed under: Frugal Living
This past weekend as our family’s vacation to Branson, MO, wound to an end, we took our “traditional” trip to a handful of the various outlet malls in the area. Honestly, this is more of a futile attempt to stretch out our vacation than an opportunity to shop. But when walking among the assorted discount stores, it’s easy to get sucked in the doors by the appearance of an opportunity to find “deals.” (Notice my qualification of these so-called deals.)
On this particular trip, my father and I discovered a store hawking the epitome of “man toys”: Power tools. Wall-to-wall, discounted, clearanced, close out, factory reconditioned, and factory overrun implements of mass budget destruction. It was a wondrous spread with offerings to meet nearly every home improvement need.
But then the battle began…
Beholding all these tools, all I could see was the opportunities they would provide and the projects they would allow me to tackle. The scroll saw would give me the chance to build and furnish the doll house I’m sure my daughter would like; the power saw would help me cut boards so I could build her princess bed; the power drill would let me put everything together. But power tools combined with ideas and good intentions only build larger credit card bills and abandoned power tools collecting dust instead of creating it.
Within moments of entering the store, my arms were filled with boxes of powered promises and my hand was reaching for my wallet. Then frustrated salvation arrived - my wife came searching for me in the store. My initial reaction was to go on the offensive. “Can’t you just imagine the great things I could do with this [insert random unnecessary tool here],” I wanted to say. I wanted to justify my supposed need for these implements. But I had to be honest with my wife and with myself: I had no need for those tools that day. With all the other varied projects I have stacked up awaiting completion, the tools that were weighing down my arms were also weighing on my budget and my conscience.
While I like to pride myself on my frugality, I am far from infallible. More often than I’d like to admit, I have to fight with myself to keep from spending stupidly. That’s the way it’s been my whole life; months of frugality are dashed in one day by some money burning a hole in my pocket. Fortunately, my wife is a great stabilizing force and can keep me in check when I’m about to make a poor purchasing decision.
So don’t be discouraged if you find that living frugally is difficult. Frugality is a battle against yourself and the influence “stuff” has on you. It’s a hard fight that must be fought every day. Everyone has a weakness and there is always something out there looking to take advantage of it. The best thing you can do is to be strong and have someone keep you accountable for when you’re not quite as strong. Having an accountability partner, such as my wife is for me, gives you someone to lean on and defend you in a moment of weakness and gives you the opportunity to do the same. In the end, you’ll finding yourself winning more and more often as you conquer your spending demons.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Great post! It is easy to be tempted. Sometimes I can get so down on myself when I do succumb, but knowing I’m not the only one out there struggling helps.