Amy Dacyczyn, who wrote The Complete Tightwad Gazette, said: “Frugality without creativity is deprivation.”
For me, what saved it from drudgery was treating it Iike a game, even when it was deadly serious. Years ago I separated from a lawyer husband, who did not want me to have a dime, and was well placed to cost me the most money and misery possible in a divorce. I had just switched careers and was not earning much.
I realized that this gave me an opportunity to figure out what I really valued. I didn’t need to eat meat. I did not need a fancy car. I could get sturdy furniture off curbs on trash pickup day and from the basements, attics and garages of family and friends. As long as my apartment was clean, it did not need to be in a fancy neighborhood. I did need work clothes, but there were expensive neighborhoods around me with great thrift shops.
I started a new life with very little in the bank and a hodgepodge of stuff. What turned my apartment from a hovel into a nice place to live was creativity. A bunch of dresses and pieces of fabric in pretty colors and patterns from the $1 a bag sale at a thrift shop was deconstructed into curtain toppers and cushion covers. Calendar pages and photos, inserted into thrift store frames, became artwork. I made broth from onion skins, carrot and potato peelings and celery roots and leaves.
Some of my friends saw my life and felt bad for me. Pity can be hard to take. But I was building my frugality muscles. I did NOT think about my spreadsheets and FI very much, and perhaps that was key. I thought about optimization, and asked myself the question that Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez pose in their wonderful book Your Money or Your Life: “What gives me the most happiness for the least expense?”
If you read Pete (Mr. Money Mustache)’s blog from the beginning, you can see that he and his wife did very much the same thing. Yes, there are spreadsheets. But they simmer in the background. The real task, and where the fun and creativity come in, is hacking your life.