• Wellbeing: Embracing frugality
IT’S HARD TO RESIST THE ITCH TO SHOP. BUT EMBRACING A LITTLE THRIFTINESS COULD BOOST YOUR HAPPINESS, AS WELL AS YOUR BANK BALANCE
“The magic word is enough. Enough to feel content. Finding your personal definition is a sure path to happiness”
We all know the benefits of spending wisely and living debt-free, but it can be hard to remember them in the run-up to Christmas. As we’re barraged by adverts and the present hopes of younger family members, the pressure to buy more builds, and good intentions are forgotten.
And that’s just at Christmas. In this age of click-tobuy purchases, it can be as hard to keep spending in check every other day, too. This month sees the annual shopping scrum that is Black Friday (23 November), with its scramble for cheap goods and irresistible bargains. The dangers of buying-without-thinking lurk on every computer screen – the siren call of a quick, mood-boosting internet purchase is hard to resist when you are bored at work or feeling generally listless and need something to buoy you up.
One way to counter the craziness of Black Friday is to embrace Buy Nothing Day ( buynothingday.co.uk), which encourages us to ‘switch off from shopping and tune into life’ by spending not a single penny on 23 November. This spend-free initiative may just be for one day, but the organisers hope it will encourage us ‘to make a commitment to shopping less and living more’.
In her book L’Art de la Simplicité (Trapeze), Dominique Loreau recommends combating consumerism by shedding unnecessary purchases and only buying and keeping what you truly need. This will give you space to think and create. “Opulent luxury brings neither grace nor elegance,” she writes. “The magic word is enough. Enough to live, enough to eat, enough to feel content. Finding your personal definition of what enough means is a sure path to happiness.”
THE FRUGAL FOLK
Living with less is a way of life embraced by financial journalist Faith Archer, who moved with her family from London to a village in Suffolk. Frugality was a necessity to begin with while her husband looked for a job, but it has since become a habit and a joy. “Even though our income has picked up, now I genuinely want less,” she says. “It helps if you strip out some of the pressures to consume – so I have opted out of direct mail, unsubscribed from marketing emails, and avoid scouring Pinterest and going to shops.”
Faith, who blogs about her pared-down life and how she saves money at muchmorewithless.co.uk, points out that it is all too easy to fall into a cycle of earning money to buy things hoping they will bring happiness, only to find they don’t, then buying more. How freeing instead, to step off the consumer conveyor belt and focus on the things that really make you happy. “Rather than lusting after more stuff,” she says, “I focus on enjoying what we already have. We only shop for things we really need, and that frees up so much time, energy and money.”
Dominque Loreau agrees: “An excess of things is invasive, overwhelming. We feel constrained; unable to move forward, we are not living. Simplicity means clearing the way for the bare necessities, the quintessence of things. Simplicity is beautiful because it brings hidden joys.”
Spending in a considered and careful fashion could also mean that an early retirement is a possibility. In the US, and increasingly in the UK, the Fire Movement (‘financial independence, retire early’)
initiated by blogger Peter Adeney (mrmoneymustache. com) proposes that by resisting irrational spending and saving around half your income instead, you could have enough cash to quit work early and spend the rest of your life doing things that really matter. This “radical new way to think about enjoying money,” he says, promises to “get you off debt-powered treadmills” and “start living life as you choose”.
WISER SPENDING
The post-war generation knew all about thriftiness through necessity – there’s nothing like food rationing to inspire creativity in the kitchen and the growing of vegetables in the garden. An economic downturn also drives the necessity to repair and mend. While we don’t have to eat powdered egg, dream of bananas, or darn our tights, we can learn from our grandparents and buy less but better.
The new frugality, is about finding the best value for money, time and energy, not simply bagging the cheapest thing on offer, or quibbling over who ate the most poppadums. It’s about controlling your finances and eliminating debt while still allowing yourself to take pleasure in possessions. It’s not about paring things back to monastic levels of ultra simplicity – living cheaply when taken to extreme can be punishing and all-consuming – but reducing the amount of unnecessary purchases. “My number-one moneysaving tip,” says Faith Archer, “is to keep a spending diary. If you write down everything you spend, you can see where your money is disappearing, and spot unnecessary spending.”
It is also about letting go of the impulse to buy things for a quick feelgood boost, or to impress others, and focusing instead on doing things. The benefits, according to a study by Dr Thomas Gilovich at Cornell University, will be longer lasting. He found that money can buy happiness but only up to a point. The amount of happiness gained by buying something desirable is short-lived, as the purchase fades into the background and you no longer notice it. Spend money instead on experiences like travelling, learning something new, or outdoor activities and they will shape your character and become part of you. “Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than material goods,” he says.
Dominique Loreau suggests drawing up a list of things that give you pleasure and trying to satisfy at least one of them each day. “Happiness,” she says, “depends on the smallest of things – writing to a loved one, planning a meal with friends, even tidying a cupboard.” It’s a simple truth, but one worth bearing in mind as the month of crazy spending looms.