I’m going to attempt to draw a line between extreme frugality and having a simple mentality of frugality. Extreme frugality can be detrimental to, well, your enjoyment of life. However, if you want to channel this extreme frugality for a very short amount of focused time, then I say go for it. An example might be when you need extreme frugality in applying your debt snowball to smash debt. Once this extreme phase of frugality is over, keep a constant mentality of frugality to make sure you stay the course you’ve so dutifully plowed. So, let’s talk about attaining a mentality of frugality.

Frugal.

The word itself sounds kind of nerdy. But being frugal does not mean you’re being cheap. So many times I see those words interchanged. Cheap means you deliver sub-par work, products, performance, or assistance in some way. Dictionary.com’s definition of frugal, however, is very different:

Economical in the use or appropriation of resources; not wasteful or lavish

Beautiful.

When you budget, you “appropriate” your resources to yourself and/or your family, separated by categories. Each month you sit down and say, “Okay, we made this much last month, where should the money go?” You’ll find that budgeting will help you maintain this mentality of frugality.

I love to give my mother-in-law (who is not your typical mother-in-law, she’s great) a hard time about one of her favorite things to do: shop. Now I’m not against shopping – as long as I don’t have to go. What I love is when she says something like this:

“This shirt is normally $40, but it was half off, so I saved $20!”

I say she spent $20.

I’m afraid people are losing their mentality of frugality quickly. One reason is because they run around with shiny plastic cards that allow them to buy things they can’t afford. Another reason is because the advertising today seems so much more in-your-face. It’s everywhere – absolutely everywhere. It’s all over the internet. We have whole industries built on the fact that we need blockers to stop popups from jumping us in a dark alley. So it’s really a two-pronged attack coming our way. We have easy access to funds that aren’t ours, that charge exorbitant interest rates, and we are bombarded by advertisements.

So it’s getting tougher and tougher to not be “wasteful or lavish.” But it can be done. In Thomas Stanley’s “The Millionaire Next Door” he teaches us that the wealthy really do have this mentality of frugality (shall we give it an acronym – MOF). What do the millionaires do? They shop for bargains. They clip coupons. They buy used cars. Only half of them even carry a mortgage. They don’t finance things that go down in value (such as cars, furniture, plasma TVs, or groceries) That’s why they’re millionaires! And don’t use the excuse that it’s because they have an extremely high annual income. Stanley shows us with study after study that just because you have a high income, does not mean you have a high net worth. They are millionaires because they MOF and work extremely hard. Read the book if you don’t believe me.

So why don’t we maybe adopt the lifestyle that really does lead to true financial security? Why don’t we MOF a bit? Forget the popups, the billboards, the commercials. Be “economical in the use or appropriation of resources; not wasteful or lavish.”