The New Thrift

Penny pincher. Stingy. Tight­wad. Avaro, codo, tacaño. And so on, through the years. We haven’t really show­ered con­ser­v­a­tive spenders with flat­ter­ing adjectives.

Years ago, my land­lord stopped by to pick up the monthly rent. We found our­selves dis­cussing the topic of shop­ping. She swore she reg­u­larly bought $200 worth of gro­ceries with just $50 and a box of coupons. I didn’t believe her until she took me to her car, popped the trunk open and reached into a mass of paper bags to pull out her receipt as evidence.

The first words to enter my mind were “miser” and “cheap­skate.” It seemed silly to waste time cut­ting out coupons. Why spend life stooped over the news­pa­per with a pair of scis­sors in hand?

I am not alone in this hasty per­cep­tion of those peo­ple who guard their money so closely. Many have viewed thrift as a sad, cheap trait with a ter­ri­ble reputation.

But to oth­ers, thrift is a word of pride. Thrift has some­thing to say in its very roots. The word comes from the word “thrive” and this makes sense. Fru­gal­ity is about mak­ing informed, effi­cient deci­sions in every­day life and the wise, judi­cious use of time and resources – so that indi­vid­u­als and their com­mu­ni­ties might live a bet­ter life. In short, thrive.

For Iris Calderón, the owner of Calderón Com­mu­nity Ser­vices, thrift is a life­long pas­sion instilled in her youth when she lived in the Bronx. Iris recalls the lessons she learned from her sin­gle mother. “She made sure that we under­stood the mean­ing of a dol­lar and how impor­tant it was to save … that name brand shoes or cloth­ing weren’t important.”

When Iris found her­self a young mother-to-be, she decided to take firm con­trol of her life. She did not want to become yet another sta­tis­tic and aban­don her edu­ca­tion and go on wel­fare. “I didn’t have a dif­fi­cult time rethink­ing my life,” says Iris. When she mar­ried her hus­band, Martín Ávila, a fru­gal lifestyle con­tin­ued to be a nat­ural fit. “We have never really been big spenders. Our inspi­ra­tion comes from our per­sonal child­hood expe­ri­ences and our chil­dren. We’ve always tried to give them a bet­ter life than we had.”

Today, their money-conscious lifestyle has paid off. Both now in their mid 30s, Mar­tin and Iris bought their first home in 1997. In 2006, they upgraded to a bet­ter home. They’ve started two suc­cess­ful busi­nesses and now own 100 acres of land on a lush moun­tain­side south of Cuer­navaca, Mex­ico. All thanks to the wis­dom of fru­gal spend­ing habits.

In Amer­ica, Ben­jamin Franklin is largely respon­si­ble for mak­ing wise spend­ing and liv­ing a virtue. His pub­li­ca­tions, Poor Richard’s Almanac and The Way to Wealth, were cor­ner­stones for much of our col­lec­tive fru­gal mind­set and per­haps for the long-revered idea that in this coun­try, any­one can make it big with ethics and elbow grease.

But even in Franklin’s day, thrift was noth­ing new. We learned to appre­ci­ate the idea long before money was invented; per­haps as the ancient farmer quickly real­ized it was impor­tant to not gob­ble up every­thing grown. To avoid future star­va­tion, seeds had to be saved for the next plant­ing sea­son. We learned the neces­sity of pro­vid­ing for tomor­row, not just today. As civ­i­liza­tions grew, this wis­dom ben­e­fited entire populations.

So thrift isn’t the stingy crea­ture we think it is; it has grown to have a big­ger heart. It isn’t about sim­ply hoard­ing pen­nies and resources for self-interest. Often these con­served resources can be used to help bet­ter a society.

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