Why would the seller be better off if a person is more frugal? This seems counter intuitive?

The tenant that economic (in)efficiency requires a zero end sum is questionable. As you illustrated in your example, both the seller and buyer would be better off if the buyer had learned to better manage his resources, thus the seller would improve his product. Also, scientists in your (previous) field are better off now that you are better off (financially independent and thus no longer competing for employment/appointments). Perhaps it is only a matter of perspective. I like to see the glass half full with room for improvement.

@mobile condo
Yeah. It fascinates me that my friends and family feel I am somehow suffering because I will not replace my beat-up, faded ’94 pickup with a large sedan more “fitting” with my status and income. Do I weep and moan? No, I laugh all the way to the bank because I still get from A to B at an operational cost far below the standard federal mileage rate of $0.50. I suppose I’m just glad they don’t consider me to some kind of miser.

It has occurred to me that I need to make a few ERE friends because I don’t know that the ones I have now will be available during working hours once I’m FI; and I’d like to have some folks to chat with/cook for/play board games with/etc.

I view eating the same way. Somewhere along the line I decided I didn’t really care about taste. Now eating is just something I do with as little effort and expense as possible because I like to spend my time, money and effort on other things. Consequently I eat a lot of oats, cold oatmeal, microwave stew and hot-dish, and boiled/slow-cooked meals.

My favorite meal is tomato paste, tomatoes, corn, chili beans, and chunked cheese (and sometimes celery or peas) all thrown together with some pepper, chili powder, or garlic on it. I used to tell people that I was eating spaghetti sauce but I have since been told that this is in fact a stew.

For the most part my friends and family don’t feel I am depriving myself. My parents have told me they see me living a more balanced life now. I make and have the money to buy lots of things- the question for me is what is enough. If I can buy $500 worth of clothing do I need to?
Great post- I like your ideas around economic efficiency.

I think one reason people feel “deprived” if they don’t spend a lot of money might be because their life is otherwise empty, and so they are trying to fill the voids, quite unsuccessfully I might add, with stuff. That is sad, really. For me, I grew up financially poor, but my Mom, rightly so, always said we were rich because we had a close family. I see a huge difference between financial poverty and financial frugality. Frugality means being resourceful enough to live below your means and have what you need, including the security of money in the bank for emergencies and the unexpected. Poverty means living paycheck to paycheck and having great difficulty making ends meet. If you are poor, then you have no financial capital to absorb any kind of emergency. The thing is, that to the hyper-consumer (the status quo in this country), both look the same, because hyper-consumers are actually usually worse off than the minimum wage earner, because they, unlike those below the poverty line, are usually in
massive debt. Very few truly poor people I know ever go into debt because they can’t or know it would bury them financially. My Mom is very wise with money even though we never had much and so I learned a lot from her. I find a crock pot full of beans more comforting and tasty than most fast food. They are a comfort food to me. A lot of people feel bad for me because “I make so little money.” according to them, but I have a professional job, though the salary is below entry level (because academia pays roughly 50% of what industry does). But most of the people who feel sorry for me have less money saved and are in debt, despite making more money than I do. Once I was out to lunch with some colleagues and I mentioned how truly grateful to God I am that I have aprofessional job that makes me not have to live paycheck to paycheck, that I can save money. They all immediately jumped down my throat about how they were all living paycheck to paycheck and how dare I say that! The funny thing is that all of
them make more money than I do except for one guy, who actaully has money saved up too. So, the two “poorest” people in our middle class group of friends, were the only two who were saving like we should. I honestly think one guy there who makes about 94k a year and is the most highly paid of the group, actaully does save quite a bit, but was criticizing me vicariously on behalf of the rest of the group. It is sad, really. To me, I treasure God, family, and freedom, and so stuff, if anything, can hinder my relationship to what matters to me, because the more we spend on things, the more trapped we are! I am not in a position to retire yet, but my goals are to make the decisions that maximize my choices and that allow me to enjoy my journey toward that goal as much as possible! And, hopefully, along the way, make some kind of positive difference in the world.

Eventually, the frugal person can have MORE–the opposite of so-called deprivation. In other words, I paid off my house early via frugal practices. I now have an extra $xxx that I can spend compared to those with similar income and a mortgage.

I think I understand that they’d both be better off if the unfrugal person became more productive with his assets (time and money). I take it as meaning the unfrugal person would learn to create and put goods/services back into the world instead of buying a bunch of unneeded goods and services. In the short term it may be good for the seller, but in the long term this unfrugal person is actually a weight on society. Interdependence is only good so long as each member knows how to contribute more than they take… or at least equal it out!

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