Why do the Dutch smile when it there is lighting outside?
because they think they will have a free photo taken
While reading a great posting titled “Are you deprived or just smart and happy“, I felt myself adjusting a belief about money and thriftiness. There is nothing like bringing a belief to the table and re-evaluating it’s utility. And this was a good one to bring up.
I was born in the Netherlands and well the dutch are known for their frugality. We have jokes about them. I think I learnt to associate frugality with a lack of generosity, crumminess and a scarcity mindset. Scrooge was a childhood favorite film of mine but that helped etch in the idea that being excessively provident made for a bad personality. I had a boss and and a good friend who would argue over pennies, it would drive me nuts.
But what got me was that this one belief overstepped its bounds. I learnt to associate thriftiness with a milder variation of crumminess, a scarcity and lack of generosity.
One of the ways this association influenced my behaviors is a certain irreverence toward savings programs, points programs and other forms of consumer reward systems. Sure, I like a good deal like anyone else, and will look for them when I want to make a specific purchase. I enjoyed using student reductions back in the day. But I disregarded this kind of consumer participation when doing my ordinary shopping. Wasn’t this stuff just for moms and what is the point spending all this effort to save a few pennies here and there.
I think part of the reason is that I value generosity, I want to cultivate an abundance mindset and being crummy just ain’t fun or sociable. But my associations were wrong. Being thrifty is not at odds with these values at all.
frugal
adj
1. practising economy; living without waste; thrifty
2. not costly; meagrethrifty
adj thriftier, thriftiest
1. showing thrift; economical or frugal
2. Rare thriving or prospering
What I wanted to do is reconnect these words with values I have. Once I read the actual dictionary definitions, I realized it is basically about being smart with resources. I don’t like wasting and you can call that a value. In fact I’m always looking to save other kinds of resources, like time, effort and costs. Being thrifty about my money is about being smart with money.
One of my favorite types of games are strategy games with resource management components (Theme Hospital anyone?). When I’m playing a game I look for the smartest, most efficient route to playing, it’s rewarding to do. Playing the money game in life shouldn’t need to be any different. And there I realized that not only can it be smart to be thrifty, it can be fun.
A survey for which at this time I can’t retrieve the source reported that households with high incomes were more active users of consumer rewards programs compared to lower income households. It was counterintuitive to me at first but now I think people that are money-smart play a very efficient resource management game and they have fun doing it.
Why does a Dutch person have a window In their fridge?
to check that the light is off
ps. Dutch jokes don’t translate that well…
I always meant to be smart about money. I read books about it, thought about it, did some smart things about it. What happened?
Time passed and life happened while I was making other plans. Where have we heard that before? So I’m learning to Take Action Today, no matter how small.
Ah, I just remembered: There was a rich old German woman who lived in my town. While walking from this bank to that bank to the other bank, she would reach into the change slot of any public phone she passed in hopes of finding a nickel, dime or quarter. Thrifty or crummy? Maybe just a money game!
Peter, I think what I’ve found – and this is just because I worked in public accounting for many years so got to see the reality of people’s resources – was that the most thrifty people are actually the most generous. There’s loads of anecdotal stories out there too of the closet millionaires who worked making $25k / year their whole lives and then donated everything they made to charity. “Stuff” just wasn’t fulfilling to them.
I still remember an audit that I went on years ago at this big construction company. I saw this guy walk in that was pretty grubby, basically looked like an old farmer. He was the owner of the company, not extraordinarily bright but a hard worker and thrifty – not cheap, but smart with his money. He donated several hundred thousand dollars into the community every year, sponsoring local rodeos, kids organizations and the like.
Think of the people you know who are generous with love or time or whatever – it’s because they have an abundance of it – and they put that where it will return the most value, don’t they? They don’t just indiscriminately waste it on anyone and everything. They’re more attuned to their values.
I know what you mean about the excessive thriftiness or scrooge-like behavior, I’ve seen a lot of that out there too. But it’s like when I went on my last cruise – I set my limit for gambling and drinks at about $100 apiece – and then tipped away another $100 or more apiece on both of them. Almost every tour I went on I tipped close to 100% on the price of the tour to the guides. But I watch what I spend so I can do things like that because it makes me feel good to give that to these other people who may not make a lot of money. If it’s only an hour of work for me to have to work to pay for them to send money home to their families to live for a week, how can I feel right over-consuming myself?
@karen Thank you for your comment. I think the old German woman was playing the money game, or simply in for some cheap fun:)
@Jacqueline
I think your post has impacted my beliefs around money/thrift, I think I’m now really trying to balance out the idea of how it all fits together. Right now its important to me that my money is well managed, as my accounts grow, I’d like to be able to think less about money. I don’t want it to have it determine my thoughts all the time. With the Scrooge-types, they have plenty of money but they are obsessed with not losing money – money is still ruling their thoughts. The interesting thing is, the more money we have, the more opportunities to lose it present them self. So in the build up of wealth/money, those days were things were tight, they help us when money is flowing more readily.