Frugality vs. Cheapness

[jamesq]

Chatting with a colleague at lunch today we got on the discussion of "cheapness". He described a relative as cheap (and the relative self-described that way too), but upon hearing his behavior I thought he wasn't so much cheap as frugal.

What's the difference? You're frugal if you do considerable research to find the best value in a restaurant before going out for dinner. You're cheap if you don't tip the server.

There is a third category: If you go to the most extravagant restaurant in town and spend money like a drunken sailor, but still don't tip the server, you're neither cheap nor frugal. You're petty.

These categories are not exclusive, nor is that the end of them. Poor differs from frugal in that your spending is restricted by a lack of funds rather then by your nature. Frugal plus stupid creates the "pennywise but pound-foolish" phenomenon. This I saw a lot of when I used to work retail - people who would spend ten dollars in gas to drive across town to save five dollars on an appliance for example.

Comments

[ersatz-marduk.livejournal.com]

Nicely summed up. Thank you.

[rocket-ron.livejournal.com]

I always thought that frugal applied to money spent on yourself, and cheap as not spending on others. My experience is that many people who are frugal are generous with others and not on themselves and cheap people are generous on themselves and not on others.

[canadianknight.livejournal.com]

Well said... although I would have stated the third catagory as "asshole". ;)

people who would spend ten dollars in gas to drive across town to save five dollars on an appliance for example.

Gods... I see that all the time. "You know that Superstore has this bottle of wine for 75 cents less?" Yeah.. that's nice. You head on up there then... LOL.

[jamesq]

I considered that (changing "petty" to "asshole") for a good couple of minutes before making the original post.

I'm surprised that Costco doesn't have a price-matching policy. Though it was hard for us to match prices the other way with Costco - Membership and lack of advertising made it difficult.

I just wish we had the authority to make minor price adjustments in those cases so we could shut the guy up. "What's that you say? Future Shop sells it for $3 less? OK, We'll just knock $3 bucks off". As it was we could usually do this anyway but it would generally mean either spending twenty minutes on the phone trying to convince FS to tell us the price or convincing a manager. It would just make sense to let the salesman do it without that kind of time wasting.

Oh well, I've been out of retail for ten years now and I'm glad.

[jamesq]

Of course, there'd always be some jerk trying to scam that last $5 off you with this sort of policy.