WHY ARE WE SO CHEAP?
I was brought up in an era when
Thrift was still considered a virtue.
Paul Getty
My generation saved their pennies. They take pride in the ability to PAY for what they wanted. They are aware of government services today that provide for people on low income, but they think everyone on welfare is either lazy or insane. My generation believes taking care of yourself is a matter of integrity. If our pensions don’t match our expenses, our solution is to trim the expenses and take advantage of savings we get from coupons and special offers. Charity is for the indigent.
How many times have you heard Aunt Sarah say, “It is disgusting how those people try to milk their unemployment benefits. Why don’t they just go get a job? When I was young, I didn’t ask the government for money. If I wanted a new dress, I baby sat and washed dishes until I earned the money to get it.”
Don’t even try to tell her that “those people” paid into the unemployment fund or got a back injury that made them unfit for work.” She will shake her head and say, something like “If they weren’t so lazy, they could find something to do. I did.”
It has to look ridiculous to people of your generation when your parents won’t drive because the cost of gasoline is almost $4.00 unless you remember that $4 when they began to notice money had the spending power of almost $65. You have to admit you, too would think twice before spending $65 for a gallon of gas.
Every generation has the same issue with the one before. I can still remember my sister infuriated with my father because he spent all her inheritance caring for my mother at home while she had cancer. She couldn’t seem to understand that it was HIS money and he earned it. Yet, this same man who seemed so extravagant to my sister had three cars in the garage that no one ever drove. He refused to sell them or give them away. “I never know when I just might want to drive again,” he explained.
My father was 87 years old, had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t see.
I love the story of my friend Andrew, who actually MARRIED a woman when he was 70, only because she was so good at clipping coupons. “She is saving me at least $40 a week,” he said. “That kind of woman is one in a million.”
What neither he nor his bride understood was that they really didn’t need all that toilet paper, cleanser and car wax they were buying with those coupons. They may have saved $40, but they spend over $80 on products they would never use. “You never know when a carton of air freshener will come in handy,” said Andrew.
It isn’t that we are cheap….it is that we are afraid of outlasting our money and we don’t like to ask our children to help us. WE controlled the purse strings for THEM for too many years. Losing control of your spending power is not just humiliating…it is terrifying. You no longer have the confidence that you can handle the kinds of tragedy every older person dreads: a surgery, an unexpected fall; a stock market collapse.
Think of it this way. Would you ask your fourteen year old to lend you $25 from his paper route money because you had maxed out your credit card and needed to buy groceries? Of course you wouldn’t. Instead, you would go to the “reduced for quick sale” and buy something you could disguise with enough ketchup be palatable. No one wants to ask their children for money. It is embarrassing.
However, there are times when the concept of frugality can be carried to a ludicrous extreme. It is the people who really don’t NEED to hoard money who are so hard to understand. Mary Ellen is 93 years old and receives life insurance payments from the death of her husband John, money from his physician’s pension and social security. When she heard that the United States government was thinking of reducing its social security payments to people with incomes over a million dollars a year, she was livid. “Sam paid into that fund his whole working life,” she sad. “He EARNED that money.”
That is how we think. If you work for something, the payment you receive belongs to you and no one else. It isn’t that we are not charitable. It is just that we believe the money you earn is as much yours as your house, your closet full of clothes and your automobile. The government certainly would not say to Mary Ellen, “Your income is so large we are going to take away your Mercedes Benz,” would it? To my generation, that is just as outrageous an idea as reducing promised payments on a pension fund we had invested in with our own money.
It is the way we are cheap that your generation cannot understand. My friend Grace will travel thirty miles out of her way to save seven cents on a gallon of gasoline, and then drop $100 dollars at the nearest casino on the chance that she will hit a jackpot no one has figured out for thirty years. I can’t justify it to you except to say that Grace makes as much sense to me as you do when you spend hundreds of dollars to play games on your cell phone but will drive blocks out of your way to avoid putting money in a parking meter.
So when your parents insist celebrating their anniversary at Denny’s because they have a coupon that gives them one dollar off Tuesday’s at four, don’t tell them the food has so much fat and additives it will kill them. Don’t even hint that they both could afford to go to a real restaurant with table cloths and candle light. Just think to yourself, ”When I get to be their age, I want to have the right to spend what I have earned, any way I like.”
What is frugal to one generation is nonsense to the next. It is no use telling your Uncle George that spending $10 on a cab makes a lot more sense than a thousand dollars on a new fender because he drove without his glasses. He won’t hear you anyway.
