My Blog, Your Money

A while ago, I stumbled upon an entry at I Will Teach You to Be Rich entitled “Cheap versus frugal.”  I was intrigued.  Up to that point, I had always thought those words had essentially the same meaning.  But the article did a good job explaining the differences and what I read made a lot of sense.  In a nutshell: To be cheap is to not spend much money on anything.  To be frugal is to spend lavishly only on the things you care about and not much on the things you don’t.

Having read the article, I now make the distinction between frugal and cheap and do my best to be more of the former.  I don’t spend much on things I am not passionate about such as clothes/accessories, travel, and eating out.  However, I will continue to spend more than the average Joe when it comes to computers and entertainment.

Now it’s your turn: Are you frugal, cheap, or neither?  If you’re frugal, keep it up.  However, if you’re cheap, it might be worthwhile to loosen those pursestrings a little.  Money is merely the means to an end and you shouldn’t compromise your quality of life just to save a few bucks.  If you’re neither, I encourage you to evaluate your spending and figure out where compromises can be made.  For example, if you are a social butterfly that enjoys going out but you don’t watch that much TV or that many DVDs, then by all means, enjoy your nights out on the town, but consider cutting back on cable and that Netflix subscription.