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Have you
seen the TLC show Extreme Cheapskates? For those who haven’t seen this series, each
episode chronicles the life of an individual who has made decisions that, to
the rest of society, seem unreasonably cheap.
I don’t just mean frugal, I mean “re-uses old dental floss” cheap.
For instance, there is a woman who doesn’t buy groceries, but rather
dumpster dives in the Whole Foods trash bins. Her rationale is that Whole Foods throws out
high-quality prepared foods that are “perfectly safe” to eat. She’s an accountant who owns her Manhattan
apartment outright, so she could certainly afford to purchase food for
herself. She also refuses to buy toilet
paper, but I’ll let you imagine how that works (one word: ick). The individuals who
are featured on this show are employed in well-paying professions, and presumably
have the means to loosen their purse strings a little. According to the show, many of these people maintain
savings accounts in the six figures, so it is not the case that they are
struggling to make ends meet.
In most
cases, I try to withhold judgment on the financial decisions that other people
make. I think there should be always be
a balance between living frugally and maintaining a reasonable quality of
life. For each person or family, the balance will be
different. That’s what makes personal
finance so personal. People have to
decide what makes sense for them and their family members. As an outsider, I rarely know the specific
circumstances informing those decisions.
So long as people have planned for their financial futures and the
futures of their loved ones, I try to keep my mouth shut. No one likes unsolicited advice, however
well-intended it may be.
I find Extreme Cheapskates quite
intriguing. These folks have found ways
to save some serious dough. That’s
commendable. But I also can’t believe
that the decisions and lifestyles portrayed in the show would be appealing to
many other people – even people who like to stretch their dollar to its fullest
potential. Many of the folks featured on
Extreme Cheapskates make decisions
that seem to negatively impact the individual’s ability to function within society. Sometimes the behaviors are unhygienic or
otherwise unsafe. And in many cases, the
individuals featured on Extreme
Cheapskates make decisions that fail to account for the needs (physical or
emotional) of their family members. The show
portrays the cheapskate as the money-management tyrant who refuses to accept input
from his or her loved ones. I think this
is the part that most bothers me. (Of
course, it’s possible that the stubborn, tyrannical aspect is created for
television. Without drama, the reality
T.V. formula doesn’t work. Maybe all
these penny-pinching decisions are made with full buy-in from the
families. We’ll never know.)
In a
recent guest post on Budget and the Beach, My Money Design wrote about
creating wealth that matters. This post
resonated deeply with me. At times, my
focus has become so narrow that I look only at the bottom line and lose sight
of what truly matters to me: my husband, my family, my faith, my friends, the
kids we hope to have, and the causes that are near to my heart. It’s easy to forget that the point of saving
money is not to hoard a bunch of cash, but to have enough financial stability
that we can achieve our life goals.
