Who is the benefactor in this ‘ideal’ scenario? I admit, I’m not the eldest likely to be sharing here, but regardless we still need to enjoy ourselves. Adhere to strictly to your ‘ideal’ plan and you aren’t sacrificing day-to-day experiences; you’re sacrificing week-to-week, month-to-month, and in time, year-to-year experiences. You wake up the morning after the day your first child leaves home and wonder where all that time went. You regret not having spent more time enjoying life together.

Our economy had become over-inflated. George Carlin used to talk about people and malls and how we walk around stuffing our faces and buying “useless shit”. It was, as expected, a comical routine. Less expected, though, was that it rings so true that it’s become the staple of the American economy. We need to quit our addiction to credit even if that means leaving $140 denim jeans and $3,000 purses on the shelves.

Paying off our credit and save for emergencies and retirement – it sounds like a decent enough start, but we must take care not to approach it in the wrong fashion.

I feel like my views on how much leeway I have have to take risks (which is in a sense what not saving as much for retirement or not having a healthy emergency fund are) has shifted dramatically each time a new development in my life increased the number of people who depend on me.

When I got married, when I got pregnant for the first time, when my parents developed serious health problems much younger than they had ever expected to… each time it became more and more important to me never to be in a position where I couldn’t take care of someone important to me because I hadn’t been careful enough with little expenses earlier in life.

Reading through the stories of other Wesabe members, it is clear that nearly everyone can find ways to free up money in their budget and grow an emergency fund. There is also a ton of great advice here and elsewhere on the web about frugal fun. Saving money doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy life.

If someone chooses to spend all of their money on cable tv, lattes, and other things I would consider frivolous, that is fine – it is their decision what to do with their money, and only they can judge the value that adds to their life. However, I probably won’t be assisting them if they figure out they can’t pay their rent later.

I think the biggest thing is 1) eliminating all the little tiny expenditures, 2) carefully plan your larger expenditures, 3) auto deducting for savings from your payroll.

Number 1 is where some get frugal, but with some discipline you can still live a fun interesting life without overspending. Taking your savings from number 1 lets you pull off number two pretty easily, as well as give you the room to do number three.

I think these things combined is the ideal blend of frugal / fun that we all would like to have!

He talks about how the distinction between “frugality” and “cheapness” is how people value their time … if you see your time as having a worth, you’re more inclined to pay someone else to do something that you could do. If you see your time as being essentially worthless, you’ll put a lot of your own time into something, and won’t be as inclined to hire the work out. It’s worth a read, as is pretty much everything he writes.

I often have a hard time when it comes to home repairs. For example, we had some drywall damage in our basement that had been there for about a year. I was happy to pay a drywall guy $250 to get it fixed, since it was work that I just couldn’t do very well. Also, I’d let it sit for a year and hadn’t done anything about it, and it didn’t look like that was going to change anytime soon. On the other hand, part of our stove broke (the glow plug lighter for the gas oven), and it looked like it would be about $250 or so to get someone out here to fix it (parts and labor). I was able to get the part (after hunting around for it) for around $60, and fix it myself. In that case, I was much more willing to tackle it on my own.

And although I didn’t intend to come back to Trent’s point about “what’s your time worth,” I think those two house repairs illustrated it. I was willing to invest about 4 hours of my time to save ~$200 on the stove, but I was happy to pay someone $250 to save me ~10 hours of time (and to do a much better job with it than I would have done).

So, yeah. Trent’s post is here: Is Time the Difference Between Big Spenders, Frugal Folks, and Cheapskates?

Caleb (Blueprint Economics)